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From Fifteen toTwenty-Five 



A BOOK FOR YOUNG MEN. 



MRS. JENNIE FOWLER WILLING, 

il 

Author of 4l A Dozen B's for Boys" kw A Bunch of Flowers for 
Girls. 1 ' " The Potential Woman" Etc., Etc. 



Quit you like men, be strong. —Paul 



THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS CO., 

CHICAGO 






Copyright 1920 

BY 

THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS CO. 



SEP 19 1921 
§>CI.A624476 



PREFACE 

"What shall we do with our boys from fifteen 
years old and upward" is the great problem that 
every Sunday School Association has wrestled 
with. It it a most serious question. Every Sun- 
day School is deficient in this respect. Young 
men of that age are in the minority, while the 
moving picture show and the theatre have them 
in platoons. 

In modern civilization young men have a hard 
time to be good — more so than young women. 
Our great cities are slaughter-houses of young 
men. And with the advent of the automobile, 
the country is becoming so. 

Young men have a hard time because very few 
people understand them or how to deal with 
them. The boy of that age is frequently treated 
as if he had no rights and no feelings. In many 
places he is not wanted. He is looked upon by 
sisters and often parents as out of place in so- 
ciety. Home is not made attractive and he seeks 
his enjoyment somewhere else. He is looked 
upon, many times, as a being who must be 
endured. Some pious parents wonder why their 
boys go to the bad after all their prayers. The 
fact of it is they neutralize the effect of their 
own prayers. 

At the very time when young men most need 
guidance and help, at the critical time when their 
habits are being formed, they are deprived of 
their rights to proper guidance and training. 
Some parents are too lax and have no govern- 
ment and some are too rigid and discourage their 
sons. It is a mighty problem how not to be too 



strict on the one hand or too lax on the other. 
It is very easy to lay down rules, but no rules can 
be laid down that will fit all cases. Every child 
is an unexplored continent, an unknown problem 
that must be solved for the first time. The 
problems of youth are almost as varied as the 
number of youth. 

What makes the problem still more serious is 
that if the golden moment is not improved, it 
can not be recalled. What we have done for 
our children can never be repaired. We may 
repent later but the impress we have made on 
the child can not be recalled. Our prayers and 
tears can not undo our influence. 

These principles being true, we welcome any 
book that will help us in our great responsibility 
towards the young and that will help them also 
in the preparation of life. The author of this 
book is our assistant in arresting the attention 
of our young people as she attempts here to 
give them good advice. May this book be scat- 
tered by the million, is our earnest prayer. It 
is the production of one who has been called 
"the most gifted female writer of America." She 
is now in heaven but her work goes on. 



Fbom Fifteen to Twenty-Five. 



CHAPTER I. 

BOY AND MAN. 

Where the St. Lawrence slips out of the 
arms of Lake Ontario, and starts off by 
itself to find the sea, it is difficult to tell just 
where the lake ends and the river begins; 
the narrowing is so gradual, and the stream 
rolls forth so grandly. 

Very beautiful is the brave young river, 
playing about through its inland archipelago, 
rippling around the feet of lichen-tinted 
rocks, reflecting the pretty pictures of its 
clumps of greenery, and, in the still night 
time, its surface sparkling with the brilliants 
of the str, 

ft 



O FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

When one is watching a young life, it is 
not easy to tell just where the gayety and 
freshness of boyhood give place to the man's 
strength and purpose. The boy slips away 
from the home shelter and is out seeking his 
fortune, making his way, an independent, 
responsible being, long before they who 
guarded his childhood are ready or willing 
to acknowledge his right to direct himself. 
We are children to our home people, as long 
as they can keep their hold upon us, even if 
our heads are gray. 

One is blind indeed who does not admire 
the courage and hopefulness, the breezy, 
though sometimes bothering jollity, the 
boundless ambition, the dauntless faith for 
the future that makes a boy's life exuberant 
and fresh, free and glorious. 

What fine, smooth sailing, one finds upon the 
St. Lawrence ! Have you ever taken the 
tour of the islands on a bright summer day ? 
The Island Wanderer thrids her way in and 
out, hither and thither, at her own sweet 



BOY AND MAN. 7 

frill, now making good headway over a plain 
sweep of river, as if she really had business 
on hand, then idling about through the 
narrowest, shady lanes, as if her one object 
was to make her gay tourists forget the busy, 
outside world, and live forever like some 
wild, aquatic birds, gliding here and there 
through lovely solitudes. 

When she brings you back toward youi 
hotel, she is saluted by the leisurely people 
sitting on their cottage verandahs, or out 
under their shade trees, and she whistles 
back her "How do you do ? " in a free, neigh- 
borly way. Canoe loads of merry girls make 
the waters gay with their glee, while the 
waves of her wake toss their little boats 
about like a mimic tempest. 

This, also, is like a boy's life. All seems 
" merry as a marriage bell," and yet — there 
are dangers lurking about, even in the 
smooth, gala-day sailing of the early years. 

We saw a wreck, its bones bleaching on 
the head of an island. " That fellow under- 



8 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

took to run without a pilot," said our 
captain. "He thought he knew the river 
well enough himself ; and he'd save expense ; 
but he paid pretty dear for the whistle. 
A current caught his sloop, and whirled 
her through that channel, and on to the 
rocks, before he knew what he was about — 
and there he had to leave her. Guess he'll 
find it cheaper to pay a pilot, if he ever 
undertakes to run on this river again." 

There are dangers that lie in wait for 
young men all along the way ; but some that 
they have to encounter belong specially to 
the time when they are just gliding out of 
the home shelter into manhood. It may not 
be amiss for me to speak of them. 

One about which much ado has been made, 
and at the door of which many false accusa- 
tions have been laid, is the over-strictness of 
parents and guardians. Now and then one 
grows up knarled, and twisted in the grain, 
from the ropes that held him from natural 
growth in childhood ; soured and sickly for 



BOY AND MAN. 9 

lack of sunshine ; secretive and tricky from 
small exactions and tyrannies, or with 
abnormal development of some faculties 
because others were cramped into nonentity 
by somebody's superstitions. Yet the great 
risk is from the lack of restraint. Boys are 
much more unkindly dealt with in this regard 
than are their sisters. They are allowed to 
develop themselves in savagery by torment- 
ing smaller boys, stoning birds, drowning 
cats, and any other pieces of brutality to 
which they can screw up their courage. 
They may gash and mutilate their moral 
sense by all manner of small villainies, many 
of them carrying the scars to the end of life. 
They may have contact with all coarse, low, 
braggadocio people, whose bravado makes 
them specially charming to the inchoate 
little man. They may rush to see and hear 
anything and everything that vile people 
throw in the way, and thus gratifying a 
prurient curiosity, they become contamin- 
ated with taints that the holiest and 



10 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

best influences fail to sweeten. People 
have queer notions about boys. They 
either believe that they are of so angelic a 
nature as to be quite proof against evil 
contact, or else they think their moral con- 
dition a matter of no consequence. Boys 
seem to be expected to be just about so hate- 
ful, contrary and wicked, and there is no use 
trying to hold them to purity or probity. 

A young fellow is full of restless activities 
that prompt him to get out of the beaten 
lines, just as the friskiness of a colt makes 
its heels fly over the traces. When he grows 
rapidly he is quite apt to suffer desperately 
from what the French call mauvaise honte. 
His body seems to him to have got the start of 
his soul. He is painfully conscious of hands, 
feet, and general awkwardness. He is often 
treated most inconsiderately, and he burns 
with a sense of injustice and of indignation. 
Many mature people act as if boys have no 
rights that others are bound to respect. They 
crowd the poor fellows into the most un- 



BOY AND MAN. 11 

comfortable and inconvenient places. They 
must give up their seat to anybody and 
everybody, whether any reason can be shown 
for the courtesy. They must be pushed into 
the most conspicuous and awkward places; 
and then, when they reach the " don't care " 
point, and become a terror by their loud, 
disagreeable misdemeanors, they have to be 
put into the pillory of a general fault-finding, 
and wholesale reprimand. My soul has 
blazed with indignation against the per- 
petrators of small injustices that I have seen 
practiced upon the outraged sensibilities of 
bashful, young fellows, who, I knew, were 
quivering in every nerve, and who would 
avenge themselves upon their tormentors by 
becoming coarse, and tough, and hard, just 
when they ought to be gentle, and sweet, 
and pure as the Lord's white saints. 

I have a friend, — yes, I have her yet, 
though she' has passed into the city that lieth 
four-square. Her class of sixty young men 
shared with her own son the love of her 



12 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWEJSTTY-FIYE. 

large, motherly heart. Most of them were 
strangers in the great city, and she knew how 
to take hold upon each with the warm, mag- 
netic hand of a true friend, and steady him 
by the dangers that beset his path. The last 
time she called upon me, she turned after 
she had said " Good-bye," and added, all her 
heart in the earnest words, " Do n't forget 
my boys. Pray for them, please. I must see 
every one of them converted, and at work 
for Christ." While she was ill her " boys " 
sent her rare flowers every day, to let her 
know how much they cared for her interest 
in them; and when she went away, they 
brought the loveliest floral tribute for her 
casket. They knew that in all the city full, 
there beat not a warmer, truer heart for 
them in their need of a friend. 

Hers was a grand work, touching with 
moulding hand the lives of sixty young men ; 
yet I can but hope while I seat myself to say 
a few things to those who are passing through 
the difficult years from fifteen to twenty-five, 



BOY AND MAN. 13 

out of their turbulent, mischievous boyhood 
into established, reliable manliness, that I 
may have a yet larger class. At least twenty 
thousand ought to read what is given me for 
them. They come around my desk while I 
write. I look into their eyes, — brown and 
grey, deep black and laughing blue,-— and I 
say with Tiny Tim in the Christmas Carols 
" God bless us all, every one." 

The Breton sailor says in his prayer, " O 
Lord, the sea is wide, and my boat is very 
small." My twenty thousand have before 
them a difficult and dangerous voyage. The 
first thing, I would, if possible, induce each 
to take on board the one onlv safe Pilot. He 
knows every rood of the way. Himself a 
young man, He has passed through every 
phase of the strange, mysterious life you are 
living. Being in all points tempted as you 
are, He knows how to rescue the tempted. 
Give Him your heart's love and confidence. 
Let Him be to you an Elder Brother, walk- 
ing hourly by your side, helping you when 
you most need a friend. 



14 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

Some of you have never known Him, 
You have yet to see Him for the first time, 
and hear from His lips the blessed word of 
recognition and fellowship. Let me entreat 
you, ask the Holy Spirit to show you how 
to come at once to our Lord. Ask Him to 
forgive you for staying away so long. Trust 
Him to take you when you stumble out 
through the dark, and throw yourself down 
before Him. He said, "Him that cometh 
unto me I will in no wise cast out." He did 
not say "Him that cometh with sufficient 
earnestness and love and faith," " Him that 
humbleth himself to do this, or that, or the 
other duty." No : " Him that cometh unto 
Me." Jesus Christ is a living, loving, mighty 
Saviour, He wants you. Offer yourself to 
Him, just as you are. He will be glad to 
take you. It is His work to make you what 
He wants you to be. Believe that He does, 
and according to your faith it will be done 
unto you. 

If an angel brought you a contract written 



BOY AND MAN. 15 

out in due form, in which you, on your part, 
promise to give the direction of your life to 
God, doing what He wants you to do the best 
you know how, and He, on His part, pledg- 
ing to supply all the grace, the disposition, 
the strength, happiness here and heaven for- 
ever, would you not sign it ? Just such a 
contract God passes down to you. It is al- 
ready signed by One whose signature was 
traced in the blood of the everlasting cov- 
enant. It is sealed by Him who cannot lie, 
and the legend on one side of His seal is, 
" The Lord knoweth them that are His," and on 
the other, " Let every one that nameth the 
name of Christ depart from iniquity ." Give 
up your sins and trust the Lord to "know 
you are His, and you will find very soon that 
Jesus will be all the world to you. 

Some of my class of twenty thousand have 
gone away from the Lord, and it seems ten 
times harder to go back to Him than it was to 
go at first. No matter how hard it is, you 
are going to do it, because it is right. That 



16 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIYE. 

determination is the key to success in every 
good endeavor. You must begin with this 
most important adjustment of your life, 
bringing it into line with the will of God. 
Do not wait to read another line till you lift 
your heart to Him who stands beside you, 
confess your sins, and trust Him to take 
you back into favor. If you had gone away 
from your mother, nearly breaking her heart 
with your waywardness, you would have 
only to let her know that you were sorry 
and wanted to come back, and instantly 
her heart would bound toward you, in 
joy that you were willing to love and 
trust her once more. Christ loves you infi- 
nitely better than your mother possibly can 
do. He has measureless joy to get you back 
to Himself. 

Some trust the Lord privately, but they 
have never taken a public stand for Him. 
Let me entreat you to consider how you rob 
others of the help toward God that you 
ought to give them. They think it is your 



BOY AND MAN. 17 

natural goodness that makes you amiable. 
You would not hide it, selfishly, if you had 
found a medicine that could cure all diseases. 
You would want to press it upon the atten- 
tion of suffering people everywhere. Christ 
has cured you; now help others come to 
Him by letting them know who helped you 
out of your sins. Others follow the Lord, 
but it is afar off, like poor Peter while his 
Lord was in the hands of His enemies. He 
was ashamed of the cross. That is a misera- 
ble way to live. Christ wants the love of 
your whole heart. God grant that during 
these hours, while we look together into His 
truth, He may lead you into the fullness of 
blessing, so that you may love Him with all 
your heart, 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 

One pleasant afternoon all were gathered 
on our steamer's deck; and though the sky- 
above us was fleckless in its summer azure, 
and the woods along the shore waved brightly 
in their June gladness, yet every eye was in- 
tent on the stream below, every lip was 
drawn, and when one had to speak it was 
with bated breath. We were nearing the 
Rapids. An Indian shot out from the shore 
in his canoe, and was taken on board. A few 
moments later we saw him at the wheel. His 
muscle was as fine and taut as that of a tiger. 
His keen eye took in every motion of the 
turbulent water. We were all glad to obey 
the order on the pilot house, that seemed 
now to come to full meaning: u Do not 
18 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 19 

SPEAK TO THE MAN AT THE WHEEL I" for 

in the fight with the rocks that were just be- 
fore us, everything depended upon his skill 
and alertness. He was supreme in that ship. 
It was his for the hour. No one dared say 
him " Nay." 

When a young man feels for the first time 
the stimulus of independent action ; when he 
reaches the rapids of his tumultuous impulses, 
on finding himself free, dominant, regnant, 
he needs, as never before, a strong, sure hand 
on the helm. The rocks all along that part 
of his way are strewed with wrecks. Where 
so many go down it is wise to sail carefully. 
I suppose more young men fail in their faith, 
and swerve from the good and the right way, 
than any other class of people ; and more be- 
tween eighteen and twenty-five, than at any 
other age. This, not because there is special 
moral infirmity or feebleness in men, or in 
men at that point in life, but because there 
are special temptations. 

If boys are imposed upon in an exasperat- 



20 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

ing manner, young men are treated with a 
leniency that is quite as harmful. One ex- 
treme follows the other. They are the pet- 
ted members of society ; and like all favor- 
ites, they are spoiled by indulgence. Many 
things are allowed them which others would 
not be permitted to do. There are several 
reasons for this, the chief, perhaps, is the fact 
that with youthful courage and spirit, they 
earn plenty of money, which they are quite 
ready to spend. So the people who make 
their living by catering to the public taste, 
usually consult the preferences of these, their 
most profitable customers. 

They are eager to know a little of every- 
thing that is going on, and that curiosity leads 
them where they not unfrequently receive 
more harm than good. All these things con- 
spire to stimulate their appetite for excite- 
ment, which grows by that it feeds upon. 

Young men have often to work hard, and 
they claim the relaxation of amusements 
when they are off duty, that their strength 



THE PILOT IN COMMASTD. 21 

may be kept up, and their brain rested for 
the next day's service. Their greatest dan- 
ger lies along that line. 

One of the most common recreations, and 
one that tends as certainly to excess as any 
other, is the reading of fiction. It is quite 
as fascinating as the opium habit, and, in- 
deed, the two evils resemble each other de- 
cidedly. It would be foolish to insist that 
one's reading must be held down to plain, 
simple, actual facts. He would be as much 
bothered to find out what he might read, and 
what he must shun, if he were to attempt to 
live by such a rule, as the Jews were in their 
hair-splitting distinctions about Sabbath bur- 
dens, and similar inanities. Since some fic- 
tion may be read to advantage, you had bet- 
ter know the symptoms of excess, so that you 
can properly guard yourself. Story reading 
tends to an abnormal development of your 
fancy for the young ladies ; it harps almost 
entirely on that one passion ; and few young 
men need special stimulus in that line. They 



22 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

do not need to go through book after book to 
cultivate their interest in " the girls." 

Novel reading tends to give its votaries 
false views of life. The story-people are so 
much nearer perfection than those with whom 
we are obliged to live, that we cannot help 
feeling disgusted with the commonplace ways 
of the latter. 

In inveterate cases, the victim moves about 
in a dream, as completely unhinged from ac- 
tual people, as the opium eater can be. Good, 
solid, reading becomes distasteful : the Bible 
quite a bore. He is never satisfied unless he 
is straining every nerve, galloping through 
page after page to find out which fellow suc- 
ceeded in marrying the heroine. When he 
gets to the end, and the couples are perma- 
nently paired off, — a state of things that 
speedily lapses into the commonplace in real 
life, — he finds himself in a complete collapse, 
utterly empty of interest in anybody or any- 
thing, till another story puts him under the 
lash and spur of excitement. His appetite 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 23 

for the sensational grows uncontrolable ; it 
goads Mm ever onward, and he has no rest 
night nor day. 

You can see that this mental opium eating 
must ruin body, soul and spirit, and, unless 
it can be held under tight rein, you had bet- 
ter take a pledge of total abstinence. 

What I have said of novel reading, holds 
true of dancing, card playing, the skating- 
rink, the base-ball ground, the theatre, the 
opera, the use of tobacco, and alcoholic in- 
toxicants. They are all wasteful of money, 
time, strength, and of the actual character for 
uprightness and sterling ability. There is 
much to be said about the unhealthful and 
immodest dressing of the ball-room, and the 
promiscuous hugging of round dances, but I 
can hardly touch upon these lines, and the 
depths of impurity over which those torches 
glare. The tendency to excess in all of them 
is beyond question. A young lady insisted 
that there could be no harm in a few friends 
dancing in a parlor. Of course she would 



24 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

never think of going to a public ball. " Yes ; 
but, Laura, if you allow yourself to dance at 
all, you can hardly hold the lines where you 
mean to keep them." It was not many 
months before she came in with a clouded, 
discontented face. 

"What is the matter, Laura? Has any- 
thing gone wrong with you ? " 

" Oh, there is going to be the loveliest great 
ball down town, and mother says I can't go ; 
and I'm dreadfully provoked." 

" Yes ; that is just what I was sure it would 
come to. Your quiet, harmless, little parlor 
dances did very well for a while ; but now 
you are determined to go to the public ball? 
Do you see the natural tendency to excess in 
all these things ? " 

When one makes up his mind to be a thor- 
ough Christian, he will have to let the Lord 
guide him in his amusements, as well as in 
everything else. A young lady went to a 
minister, not her pastor, and asked his advice 
in regard to going to a " hop." 



THE PILOT m COMMAND. 26 

" Our church people are terribly straight- 
laced," she said ; " but I'm sure there can be 
no harm in it." 

He saw that she had made up her mind, so 
he determined to answer her according to her 
folly. 

" Why, certainly," he said, " I'd go ; only 
I'd ask the Lord Jesus Christ to give me His 
blessing." 

"Indeed, I'll do no such thing!" she re- 
plied, before she thought. " I'll not say any- 
thing to Him about it." 

Evidently she was in the rapids, and she 
had not given the Pilot command. 

There is something charming in the grace 
and rhythmical movement of the dance ; and 
when for the sake of avoiding the excess, the 
wastefulness, and the bad associations, one is 
obliged to give it up, the struggle is some- 
times severe. Tens of thousands decide for 
the world, and give up Christ, when this is 
the test of submission. They do not make 
it a direct issue, a choice between the salva- 



26 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

tion of the soul and the dance. The enemy 
is too subtle to allow that. He puts the case 
skilfully : " You mean to be good and do 
right, but these saints overdo the matter. 
You can't let them dictate to you. As good 
people as ever lived have indulged moderately 
in all these delightful, refining amusements, 
and you'll do well enough if you are as good 
as they." 

The only safety is in committing the mat- 
ter entirely to the Good Pilot, choosing His 
will and trusting for His guidance. If you 
look for wisdom to any but the Lord, you 
will be sure and go wrong. These principles 
hold good of the other fashionable amuse- 
ments to which I have referred. 

I glanced in at a skating rink the other 
evening. It was late; the skaters looked 
jaded. They had the appearance that one 
sees always in those who are lashed by an 
appetite for excitement to seek something yet 
more exciting. When the band began to 
play they spun away again ; though a young 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 27 

girl who had stopped a moment before within 
earshot, had given an unconscious comment 
on the weariness of the affair. "I'm tired 
enough to drop," and her face showed that 
the speech was within the limit of probabil- 
ity. Forever and forever the reckless use of 
time and strength, and all under the plea of 
resting from serious work ; and also the ten- 
dency to excess that marks every amusement 
that excites and gratifies excitement, and be- 
side, the opportunity of free, general associa- 
tion that bad men and women are not slow to 
take advantage of, to the infinite damage of 
the morals of the unwary. 

Base-ball played on the village green by a 
company of "boys" who l^ave been brought 
up together, is one thing, and the same game 
in the city park, where young men rush to- 
gether by the thousand, many of whom can 
ill afford the afternoon from work, and the 
admittance fee, and who cannot with safety 
take the jostling and crowding among sport- 
ing men, who are loud, and coarse, and unscru* 



28 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

pulous ; drinking, smoking, swearing, betting, 
— that is quite another thing. Unless you 
are sure you can stop at the exact point de- 
manded by economy, uprightness, purity, you 
had better let it alone altogether. 

I can hardly find an excuse for the late 
hours, excitements, bad contact and general 
riskiness of the card table, the theatre, and 
the opera. Perhaps you can; but I have 
seen so many wrecks on all these lines, that I 
am like the nobleman who was trying to hire 
a coachman, and who questioned a couple of 
applicants in regard to their skill in driving. 
The first was sure he could drive within an 
inch of a precipice, and not go over. " And 
how near could you go ? " the gentleman ask- 
ed the other. " Sure, your honor," was the 
reply, " I 'd drive as fur from the idge as iver 
I could." 

There is something in young blood that 
gives a relish for daring, — a charming sense of 
superiority when one can do what others fail 
in, even if the thing done is not, of itself, 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 29 

specially worth while. The crucifixion of a 
complete surrender to the Lord touches this 
foolish ambition. One has to acknowledge 
his incapacity for self-management, which is a 
bitter thing to do ; and the course in which 
he knows he will be led, lies at right angles 
with the opinions and practices of the mass of 
people around him. They go where they 
please, and when they are commended it is 
a flattering unction. He goes where God 
pleases, and if he escapes loss, and gains good, 
it is God, and not he, who is thanked. 

If you choose to give the Lord Jesus Christ 
the command of your craft, yen may as well 
face the matter fairly, and, as He enjoined, 
count the cost. 

When you present to Him your body, as a 
living sacrifice, you will find that He means 
it to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and 
you will have to care for it accordingly. The 
question will come up, " Shall I smoke tobac- 
co and take a i social glass ' now and then, as 
the rest of the ' boys ' do ? " You will be 



30 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

obliged to submit the matter to Him. When 
it appears, as I think it will, if you consider 
it fairly, that narcotics and intoxicants, even 
when used moderately, burn out the brain, 
and ruin the nerves, you will have to put 
them aside with a resolute "No;" though 
you may be hissed as a coward, and "poky," 
" old deacon," or what not. 

Henry Wilson, when he was Vice Presi- 
dent of the United States, said that the hard- 
est thing he ever said was uttered at the ta- 
ble of a senator, the first distinguished man 
who ever paid him special attention. Wine 
was offered him, and it tested him to the ut- 
most, to say to his host, "I never drink 
wine." 

In glancing again over rocks that make 
these " rapids " so dangerous, let me recapit- 
ulate. They are an extravagance that you 
cannot afford. You need to invest your 
money in something beside the frothy false- 
hoods of the theatre and opera, the excite- 
ments t of the rink and the base-ball park, 



THB PILOT IN COMMAND, 31 

the card-table and the ball-room, beer fumes 
and cigar smoke. You need your time for 
other things. You cannot afford the risk of 
the associations that are inevitable, if you 
frequent such places. You do not want to 
become the man that the majority of those 
are whom you meet at such places ; and you 
know that we become like those with whom 
we are associated. You cannot fail to see 
that they tend to excess. 

But I have not yet touched the main rea- 
son why they should be shunned. Paul said, 
" If meat make my brother to offend, I will 
eat meat no more while the world stands." 
He knew so certainly that an idol was noth- 
ing in the world, that it would not have hurt 
his morals to eat meat that had been offered 
to an idol; but he knew, also, that there 
might be some weak brother, who would be, 
by that example, led into idolatry, thus losing 
his soul, and the blood of his perishing would 
be on Paul's skirts. Giving one's self for the 
salvation of others is the most Christly thing 



32 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

that can be done. Our Lord gave Himself 
utterly for us ; and if any man have not the 
Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. No man 
liveth to himself. The primal murderer ask- 
ed God in the dastardly impudence of selfish- 
ness, "Am I my brother's keeper?" When 
the brand touched him he found out how 
God regards the bond by which his human 
children are bound to each other. You that 
are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the 
weak. There are people who have pleasant, 
cheerful manners, sitting at your table, and 
talking about indifferent things, yet from in- 
herited appetites and tendencies, or bad hab- 
its, they are in a fight with demons, desperate 
and dark, and it will take only the weight of 
a finger to turn the battle against them. I 
have known brilliant, educated men, who 
could not taste fermented wine at the sacra- 
ment of the Lord's Supper, nor inhale the 
odor of bay rum in a barber's shop, without 
becoming wild with the appetite for strong 
d^ink. The passion for gaming is but little 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 33 

less inveterate, and for the other " pleasurea," 
as they are called, people risk perdition. 
Now when one is in such a case as that, dare 
you add your example to the awfully danger- 
ous preponderance of evil? No! ten thou- 
sand times, No ! Better that a mill-stone 
were hanged about your neck, and you 
drowned in the depths of the sea, rather £]» an 
you should make one of these little ones of- 
fend. If it be a self-denial, you must deny 
yourself, lest, as Paul said, the weak brother 
perish for whom Christ died. As a follower 
of the Lord Jesus you have no right to con- 
sult your own preference in any of these 
matters. You gave yourself to Him that He 
might save you from your sins. You are not 
your own, you are bought with a price. 
That, with your voluntary surrender, makes 
you His, for Him to use, and employ in His 
service, as He will. By so much as you neg- 
lect to. give Him your whole heart, and the 
complete obedience that He requires, you rob 
Him. Think who you are, — a mere atom 



84 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

creeping about on this speck of His star- 
dust for a day ; — and who He is, — the high 
and holy One who inhabiteth eternity, sitting 
on the circle of the heavens; and then an- 
swer the terrible question, " Will a man rob 
God ? " and the fearful accusation, " But ye 
have robbed Me." Choosing to follow the Lord 
wholly, is the only wise course to take. He 
made you, He only knows how to bring you 
to your best. He can make infinitely more 
of you than you can make of yourself. 

It is safe. The adversary tries to make us 
believe that it is a fearful thing to serve the 
Lord with the whole soul. Under his mis- 
representations it appears as though if you 
place yourself in the Lord's hands, He will 
take away what you most prize, and leave 
your life empty, hard, and bare. Yet the 
word is, " As a father pitieth his children, so 
the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." " He 
delighteth in the prosperity of His servants." 

Is it not strange that with the thirty thou- 
sand promises that the Lord has given us, 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 35 

and though He has exhausted the language in 
trying to make us see how infinitely He loves 
us, yet we are slow of heart to believe that 
He does actually delight in making us happy. 
Oh, the wicked perversity of unbelief! 

We are surer to hold to any enterprise, if 
we give ourselves to it heartily, than we are if 
we take it up in an indifferent or gingerly 
manner. The more earnest and hearty our 
support of a cause, the less liable are we to be 
discouraged by the trials that it may bring us. 

A friend of mine was on a Mississippi 
steamer many years ago, when they came to 
a place known among river men as the grave- 
yard, on account of the sawyers that were in 
that part of the stream, and that had sent 
many a good boat to the bottom. To my 
friend's surprise, as the vessel came to the 
graveyard all steam was ordered on. When 
he asked why, he was told that the boat 
must be put under all the power that she 
would bear, so that she would obey the helm. 
Everything might depend upon her turning 



38 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

at a second's warning when the pilot dis- 
covered a danger. 

Let the Great Pilot take the wheel. Sur- 
render yourself up to Him for service, and He 
will fit you up to do His will. A young man 
who had recently been converted, went to the 
Young Men's Christian Association and asked 
for something to do for the Saviour. They 
gave him some " dodgers " and told him to 
go out upon the street and invite people to 
the evening service. In a little while he 
discovered that when any one who knew him 
came along, his hand would suddenly go 
behind him, and he would seem to be waiting 
for a street-car. "Now, see here, sir," he 
said to himself, " this will never do : you'll 
not hold out a month, unless you get over 
being ashamed of being seen at this business," 
and he went at once to the Saviour, and had 
his heart cleansed from the fear of man, so 
that he was not afraid to stand up for Jesus 
always and everywhere. 

This victory is not a matter of time. Many 



THE PILOT IN COMMAND. 37 

old Christians are as much fettered as they 
were the day of their conversion. It is not 
a matter of growth. Many who have grown 
a great deal in knowledge, and more or less 
in grace, since their conversion, are still very 
far from giving Christ the entire control of 
their lives. There are only two things 
necessary to this result ; — submission and 
trust. They can be done as soon after con- 
version as one is able, through the Spirit's 
help, to apprehend the need. They are very 
simple when one honestly seeks to do them. 
You give yourself over to the Lord, body, 
soul, and spirit, for time and eternity, that 
you may do His will, and that alone, as far as 
you are able to find out that will. You ask 
Him to cleanse you from all sin, so that the 
element of disobedience may be eliminated 
from your soul. John said, " If we confess 
our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us 
our sins, and to cleanse us from all un- 
righteousness." You say, "Since I have 
given myself to Him, I have given Him the 



38 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

chance to save me as He wants me to be 
saved. He takes me on purpose to cleanse 
me, and I believe that He does now make me 
clean." 

If you submit and trust in this manner, it 
will not be very long till you will know 
beyond question, that the blood of Christ 
cleanses you, and that He has supreme con- 
trol of your life. 



CHAPTER in. 

IN SCHOOL. 

I remember an autumn day in Milan, 
when a note came to the hotel, asking the 
Americans to come to the English chapel for 
a memorial service in honor of their dead 
President. It was a most interesting occa- 
sion. The King of Italy was represented by 
the Prince of Leghorn. The municipal au- 
thorities were also present. An American 
tourist was asked to speak of our nation's 
loss, which he did in a manner never to be 
forgotten. Among many beautiful things 
that he said, was a reference to a picture that 
was on exhibition in the National Exposition 
of modern Italian art, then in session in the 
city. It represented a room, empty and bare, 
a woman sitting there with little children 



40 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

clinging to her, and crying for bread, while 
in one corner lay the stone-dead father. 
" Out of such a home," said the gentleman, 
" came James A. Garfield ; and that he could 
come out of such a home, and become the 
man he was, is possible only in America." 

In Rome, a few days later, a similar mes- 
sage brought the Americans together for a 
similar service. Among other beautiful things, 
the rector said of Garfield: "A canal-boy 
trudging along on the tow-path after hi$ slow 
team. A few years later all the millions of 
Christendom were listening at his bedroom 
door for the count of his pulse ; and when at 
last his brave life went down, all the millions 
of Christendom followed his bier weeping as 
mourners. That the canal-boy should reach 
such a place of honor and trust, is possible 
only in America." 

One great day on Bunker Hill the people 
were crowding to the front, endangering the 
lives of those on the platform. Daniel Web 
ster waived them back with his kingly hand. 



m school. 41 

" We can't stand back ! " cried a man in the 
crowd. " It is impossible ! " — " Impossible ! " 
exclaimed Mr. Webster, " Nothing is impos- 
sible on Bunker Hill ! " 

Nothing is impossible in this free, generous 
America, 

" Heart within, and God o'erhead." 

The young man who wants to make the most 
of himself, for good work, is guaranteed full 
scope and opportunity. All things right and 
reasonable, are possible to him. If he wants 
"an education," as we call a given amount of 
school drill, he will find it, extraordinaries 
excepted, within reach of his ability. It may 
require a great deal of self-subjugation and 
perseverance, but it is possible. 

Perhaps you are just now settling the ques- 
tion of your attempts in that line — whether 
or not you will " go through college." You 
enjoy study. You love books. You appre- 
ciate the advantage of being liberally edu- 
cated ; but the four or five years necessary to 



42 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

such an undertaking, are packed with self 
denials ; and they seem a long time to spend 
in preparation for active life. 

Your parents are unable to help you, and 
you will have to " work your way," Many a 
noble fellow has done that; and yet many 
who have attempted it have given up in dis- 
couragement. When Bishop Simpson was 
President of Asbury University, an awkward, 
poorly-dressed, country boy, came to his office 
to register as a student. With his usual 
kindly interest, Dr. Simpson spoke to the 
young man about the amount of time and 
hard work it takes to master a college course. 

" Have you the means to carry you 
through ? " he asked. " What have you to 
depend upon?" 

The young American straightened his mus- 
cular frame, and extended his snn-browned 
hands, with the brave reply: " My two hands, 
sir." 

You will not be surprised to know that he 
got his education, and also, that he became 
a United States senator* 



IN SCHOOL. 43 

You may have only your two hands to de- 
pend upon, and you shrink from the sacrifices 
involved in " working your way." I would 
be glad to say a word that shall turn the 
scale in favor of the best possible culture. 
Other duties may interfere. Your health 
may prove unequal to the strain. These, 
however, are the exceptional cases. With 
youthful courage and vigor, and a spirit con- 
scious of the dignity of its relation to God, 
you will find each sacrifice light, as it passes. 
In later years the trials will be remembered as 
certificates of "pluck," in which you will 
pride yourself, as soldiers take pleasure in 
showing their scars. 

The time' seems long; but you will find 
when you get at the work of responsible life 
that your education is so much capital, enab- 
ling you to work at just so much better ad- 
vantage. 

The times demand straight, strong think- 
ing. Many a good enterprise comes to loss 
and wreck because they to whom it is en- 



44 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

trusted have not the ability to think all the 
way around and through its interests. There 
is usually a screw left loose, or a cord flying, 
and through that carelessness ruin comes to 
the project. The college is a mental gymna- 
sium. The most that school work does for 
one is to teach him to think steadily and 
thoroughly. Your muscle may have been de- 
veloped at the plow handles, or in the boat 
club. It matters little how you get the 
toughness and strength ; the question is, can 
you breast the wave when a life is in danger ? 
College emulations and honors are remem- 
bered only to be laughed over when the years 
sift snow upon one's head. The only serious 
point then will be, did they develop in you 
strength to think out a helpful plan for a 
hundred poor fellows who never learned to 
think for themselves. 

In these days no one is entrusted to do dif- 
ficult work without long and careful training. 
Mind needs drill as certainly as muscle. A 
horse is driven over the track hour after 



nsr school. 45 

hour, and day after day, when men intend to 
risk tens of thousands of dollars upon his 
ability to put his foot down in a given place 
within a given second. A singer who was 
gifted with a good voice went to an Italian 
vocal trainer to know what he could do for 
him in the way of culture. The reply was : 
" If you will study a year I will make you 
sing well. If two years, you may excel. If 
you will practice the scales constantly for 
three years, I will make you the best tenore 
in Italy. If for four years, you may have 
the world at your feet." 

Malibran said : " If I neglect my practice 
a day, I see the difference in my execution. 
If for two days, my friends see it ; and if for 
a week, all the world knows my failure.'' 

If drill is essential to the best use of mus- 
cle, how can we expect good work from un- 
trained thought ? 

You may forget your mathematical for- 
mulae, just as you forget the weight of the 
dumb-bells you use in the gymnasium, or the 



46 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

height and length of the bars ; but in both 
cases you will have the strength that the ex- 
ercise gave for the actual work of life. 
Another may succeed where you fail in some 
crisis hour, because he was trained as you 
were not, to track tirelessly a principle 
through all manner of entanglements and 
sophistries. 

Have you ever read Plato's dialectics ? It 
is amusing to see how Socrates drives the 
sophist by a little turn of expression from 
one point to another, till he makes him give 
an answer to a question that is directly 
opposite the one he gave to the same question 
in the outset. There are plenty of sophists 
in the world yet, and if we would escape 
their false conclusions and the consequent 
mischief, we must be able to follow the trail 
of a thought as tirelessly as a sleuth-hound 
scents a track ; and that we are able to do 
only after long, close drill. 

The difference between studying a subject 
till you know all about it, and slurring it 



IN SCHOOL. 47 

over, taking in only a few surface facts, may 
be illustrated by a story that is told of Ag- 
assiz when he was teaching on Penikese Is- 
land. An entomologist who had some rep- 
utation in his own line, came to perfect him- 
self under the great teacher. To his aston- 
ishment, Agassiz gave him a fish to study, 
telling him to use his eyes upon it, and be 
ready for an examination in an hour or so, 
that he might be properly graded. The gen- 
tleman looked the fish over carefully, deter- 
mining its class, genus, species, and peculiar 
characteristics. He found out everything 
about the subject that he could think of, and 
yet Agassiz did not come. There lay the 
fish, staring at him with its dead eyes, and 
disgusting him with its odor ; but a full hour 
passed before the teacher appeared. When 
the entomologist recited his lesson, to his 
chagrin, Agassiz shook his head. "You'll 
have to try again, sir, you have n't looked at 
the fish yet." The student was somewhat 
out of patience, but his faith in Agassiz held 



48 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

him to the work ; and he discovered many 
things that he had before overlooked. Yet 
he was obliged to wait some time for the pro- 
fessor after he had found out all that he 
thought it possible for him to see in that fish. 
This time, though the examination was a lit- 
tle more satisfactory, Agassiz said, " You '11 
have to try once more, sir, you have n't 
shown yet that you know how to use your 
eyes ; and without that you can't do anything 
with entomology." By that time the student 
was thoroughly aroused, and he went to work 
in good earnest. When the professor came 
back he was so deeply interested in points 
that he had not noticed before, that he did 
not observe when Agassiz came in. " That 
will do," said the teacher, " I see you can be 
made to use your eyes, and I know, now, 
what to do with you." 

The main object of your school drill is to 
help you form a habit of using your faculties. 
Their daily exercise unfolds them, and devel- 
ops their strength, so that they will be able 
to do good work in later vears. 



m school. 49 

But you ask if you could not get that ex- 
el oise at home, ai.d so save time and money. 
Yes, bu* you will not be apt to do so, because 
other things will claim your attention, and 
will constantly break in upon your plans. 
To get the necessary discipline you need to 
go away from your ordinary avocations, and 
set apart several years for that special object. 
Take, for instance, one point that is of prime 
importance in all the business of life ; punctu- 
ality, — a habit of doing the proper thing at 
the proper time. The college bell is the in- 
structor in that department, and there is not 
a more useful member of the faculty. If 
students acquire & habit of presenting them- 
selves in a given place at a given moment, it 
will give a reliability of mental action that 
will be of incalculable value in the years to 
come. There are other educating influences 
in college life that are not represented by the 
number of text-books mastered. Listening 
to good music develops musical taste. By 
familiarity with fine pictures the eye is culti- 



50 FROM FEETHEN TO TWENTY-ETVB. 

vated to discern the points that; mark a gen- 
uine work of art* The atmosphere about a 
college is bookish, and unless one is quite ob- 
tuse, his taste for books will be thereby devel- 
oped. 

The personal influence of the college fac- 
ulty is a matter of no small importance. Con- 
tact with a refined, cultured person, educates 
one. College professors are selected with 
care, and students have daily association with 
them. The best they give their classes is not 
what they find in the text they are teaching, 
but their own lives — themselves. One can 
hardly help noticing how even the manner- 
isms of a strong professor are unconsciously 
imitated by his students. 

Society work, with the contests and class 
victories of school life, look like mimic war 
to those who are handling the world's serious, 
actual facts ; but after all, they help develop 
mental courage, which is, perhaps, the chief 
factor in every great enterprise. 

When a young man stands on the thresh- 



IN SCHOOL. 61 

old of active life, quivering with restless en- 
ergy, it seems like a heavy investment for him 
to give four years, and the amount of money 
that represents the difference in value be- 
tween a consumer and a producer, for the 
sake of securing a liberal education. Yet he 
will hardly find an easier way to lay up ten 
thousand dollars. Aside from the pleasure of 
knowing something of the classics and the 
sciences, and the fellowship with bookish peo- 
ple, his education may have that financial 
value. His salary may be increased by it 
eight hundred or a thousand dollars a year ; 
and that is the interest on ten thousand. Add 
to this its cumulative value, and also that 
the higher and better-paid positions are hard- 
ly open to one who is not liberally educated, 
and you will see that the investment is a 
profitable one. 

It may be well for me to remind you of 
the dangers of your school life, as forewarned 
may be forearmed. 

Young men sometimes become coarse and 



52 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

boorish in their exile from the refinements of 
home. Hasty meals in boarding-houses and 
"club" dining-rooms, are apt to mar table 
manners. The charming accomplishment of 
table talk that saves the dining-room from 
becoming a mere feeding place, making it the 
scene of delightful and helpful domestic re- 
union, is quite lost. 

A college curriculum is so heavy as to 
leave the average student little time for 
legitimate recreation. When he gets away 
from, his books, his bottled-up spirits are apt 
to find vent in mischievous tricks, that de- 
pend mainly for their fascination upon the 
discomfort they occasion some one who has 
given offense, either by his strictness or his 
verdancy, — a mild type of savagery that de- 
velops in the perpetrator anything but no- 
bleness of soul. A student who is betrayed 
into that sort of mischief, is liable to become 
a cheat in addition to the braggadocio, swag- 
ger, and deception, that are cultivated by such 
exercises, if he is out half the night in such 



m school. 53 

adventures, he will have to cheat his way 
through the recitation room, or lose his class 
standing. He cheats his parents, who may be 
sacrificing heavily to get money to pay his 
bills. He cheats himself out of a chance to 
lay a foundation for a strong, useful charac- 
ter. 

Now and then a wild college boy has come 
out of his freaks into a noble manhood, and 
people who are afflicted with "bad boys,' 5 
have tried to wheedle themselves into a 
belief that tnat wildness is a sign of special 
mental activity. "Young men must sow 
their wild oats," they say, in a ghastly 
attempt at a cheerful view of the case. Now 
if by " wild oats " they mean infractions of 
the moral lav/, doing unto others as you 
would not have others do to you, we say " No ! 
a thousand times, no I " Young men are not 
idiots, that they should be exempt from 
moral obligation. Men claim and hold the 
prerogative of making all civil and ecclesias- 
tical laws for all the land. They elect on? 



54 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

rulers. The} aspire to fill all our college 
professorships and presidencies, to be the 
presbyters and bishops ; and shall we permit 
such faults in their early training as may 
leave an unsound place in the foundation of 
their character ? Do not all teachers know 
that perfection in any line can be hoped for 
only from training begun in early childhood? 
The United States Commissioner of Educa- 
tion said to me ons day, " I am learning to 
lay more stress on primary teaching. I am 
coming to believe that education, to do its 
best, must begin with the breath." Dare we 
say that moral training is exceptional? 
Holmes says that tampering with sin is like 
touching nitrate of silver. The stain is there, 
though it may not show. All that is needed 
to bring it out is a stiong enough light. So 
I say, if you expect to become a sovereign 
and law-giver, touch nothing, even " in fun," 
that has in it a moral taint. 

Ancient Egyptian kings permitted none 
but persons of noble blood to serve their 



IN SCHOOL, 55 

children as menials, or be near them, for fear 
the princes and princesses would become 
coarse and common by contact with uncul- 
tured people. If we leave the law-making to 
men, we must insist that they be kept pure 
from babyhood, so that their moral sense 
may be firm, true, and reliable. 

So let us have no more stealing from 
pantries, petty larcenies upon melon patches 
and orchards, tricks at the expense of pro- 
fessors, or hazing of freshmen. What would 
you think if your sister were guilty of such 
offences? Yet her responsibility in church 
and state will be light beside yours when 
you reach maturity. 

College training is supposed to be a way 
of forming, at ?arge expense, right mental 
and moral habits. Every hour that the 
student gives to mischief, defeats, by so 
much, the purpose of the work. It takes 
time and strength from legitimate drill, and 
wastes them upon that which develops the 
opposite of the refined, modest manners, that 
characterize the scholarly gentleman. 



&3 FKOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

" Oh, but a fellow can't keep himself laced 
down to books all the time, — all work and 
no play. He has got to have some fun." 
To be sure he has. Recreation is just as 
needful in its place as study. The oil on the 
axle of a car-wheel is necessary to the wear 
of the metal, but you have to look out, or a 
"heated journal" will set things on firs. 
More than one young man takes his parch- 
ment with a face stained with the smoke of 
a " heated journal." 

" Oh, but your fiddufine, Miss-Nancy-ish, 
button-hole-boquet men, never amount to 
anything. It is grip and grit that win ; and 
they are developed by getting into scrapes 
and then getting out by your wits." I think 
you have hardly gone to the bottom of this 
subject, if that last sentence is your conclu- 
sion. I agree with you that a literary, or 
scholastic, or professional " dude,"even in the 
pulpit, is as certainly a failure as his 
ridiculous, fashionable confrere. Wo are 
never disappointed m lily-fingeied carpot 



IN SCHOOL. 57 

knights, for we never expect them to do any- 
thing brave or strong. They are what they 
are, not on account of mental drill and loyalty 
to moral principle, but in spite of efforts to 
develop their virility. Webster said his 
oratorical success was altogether the result 
of hard study. Alexander Hamilton said, 
" People sometimes attribute my success to 
genius. All the genius I know anything 
about is hard work." Agassiz defined genius 
to be a capacity for an infinity of toil. 

John Wesley moved and is still moving 
millions toward God. He was like Themis- 
cocles, who said, "I cannot play the fiddle, 
but I know how to make a small town become 
a large city." Through Wesley's labors many 
and many a desert place is made to bud and 
blossom as the rose. When he was in Oxford, 
instead of spending his nights in taking 
clappers out of college bells, or tying geese 
in professors' chairs, he was visiting the sick 
and poor, praying with prisoners, and stirring 
up to good works those whom the others in 



58 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

derision called " the Holy Club," — practicing 
the noble works upon which he was to spend 
his life, and to which he was to move tens of 
thousands. 

If you mean to make the most of your 
college life, you must plan for plenty of 
vigorous out-door sports to give you the 
necessary nerve and muscle. You must also 
see to it that your mental work is done in 
such a way as to produce the best results, 
It is possible to recite a long lesson accurately 
by training the memory to carry a heavy load 
for a short time, and then to throw it down, 
not to be shouldered again unless for a 
similar sharp effort. Such work gives very 
little actual exercise of the other mental 
faculties. It does not teach thinking, but 
rather how to escape the drudgery of thought. 
Few teachers know how to detect and correct 
this fault. If you have fallen into it, making 
your work mainly mnemonic, and giving but 
little time and strength to following out and 
assimilating the thought of your authors, you 



m school. 69 

must set about an immediate reform, or you 
will be but little helped by your college work 
Of course you understand that the helps tj 
feeble students that are so easily procured, — 
"ponies," you college boys call them, — 
writing Greek case and tense endings on 
cuffs and thumb-nails, and all that sort }f 
thing, cheats nobody so seriously as it does 
the perpetrator. Unless he means to be true 
to himself, honest under the lidless eye, his 
diploma will mean but little, and it will be- 
of small use in the future. 

There is risk that good, honest study may 
interfere with your spirituality. Not that 
there is the least incompatibility between the 
best thinking and the highest spiritual attain- 
ments. Only shallow thinkers and narrow 
observers hold that they are opposed to each 
other. The fact is, they who have done the 
best intellectual work are the most completely 
loyal to the Lord. In Him are hid all the 
treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He 
has promised co give wisdom liberally. 



60 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

Yet there is risk that in using assiduously 
the means of mental growth ycu may neglect 
your spiritual development. A study may 
be specially difficult for you, or you may be 
unavoidably hindered in your work, and fall 
behind your class. In your effort to make 
up what is lacking, you neglect your Bible 
and private prayer. Yon crowd these duties 
into the last few minutes before going to bed. 
when j( u are too tired to do anything well, 
and you get very little help from them. 

After a while you find yourself haunted all 
day Sunday with the lessons that you must 
recite Monday forenoon ; and you allow your- 
self to slip into the habit of studying, — do- 
ing week-day work on the Lord's day. A 
fatal mistake, — as certainly harmful to the 
mind that needs its seventh-day rest, as to 
the soul, that is thus robbed of its day of 
worship. 

You find yourself growing indifferent to 
the Lord and His work, and you think it is 
because you miss the home helps. Not so. 



IN SCHOOL. 81 

You arc* dinning against God ind starving 
your soul. You are forfeiting your best 
chance for a useful and happy life. The old 
home means of grace that you used to enjoy 
so heartily, will seem tame and insipid enough 
when you go back to them ; and you \> ill find 
yourself miserably backslidden in heart, if 
not in life. This is a matter of the utmost 
importance. We have a day of prayer for 
schools and colleges. It ought to find every 
Christian in the land in earnest supplication 
fcr the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon 
our young people who are studying. The 
men and women who are to do the world's 
work a few years hence, are now in school, 
and upon their integrity depends the future. 
Now is the time to reach and save them. A 
little effort now will result more than a great 
deal put forth by and by. They are sensi- 
tive, shy; many of them heart-sore, on ac- 
count of their wrenching loose from home 
scenes and friends. It would not take much 
to lead them to trust the Elder Brother. A 



62 FEOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

great miny arc converted to Christ during 
their school life ; and yet many others lose 
their hold on God, and become quite formal 
and careless in their piety. The Christian 
student who gets away from the Lord, not 
only harms himself, but he loses his chance 
to help others whom he may never again find 
in so susceptible a mood, even if he ever 
meets them again at all. 

Nothing succeeds without God's blessing. 
If one would reach the highest success, he 
must let the motive for studying be purified 
by the blond of Christ, so that he can say by 
faith, " I am seeking this education that I 
may the better do His will." Then he can 
trust, with tremorleLS confidence, that he 
will be taken safely throrgh all hard places. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OUT OF SCHOOL. 

I know by bitter personal experience the 
disappointment that clouds the life when the 
verdict is finally given, and one has to give 
up going to schooi. Attempt after attempt 
has been made, but the barriers are insur- 
mountable, — poor health, weak eyes, no 
money. Many a spirited young fellow has 
faced these obstacles with throbbing brain 
and sinking heart. He sees others going 
right on, though they care very little for 
what is to him of untold worth. They idle 
and cheat their way through a college course, 
prodigal of time, careless about money, indif- 
ferent to books. The disappointed student 
quivers in every nerve with a hard hunger to 
know, a great desire to live above the coarse, 

63 



64 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

common level of physical wants, and an am* 
bition to be able, some day, to help the weak 
and poor to a better plane of life. 

There is an infinite pathos in what Mr. 
Lincoln said when Stephen A. Douglas had 
beaten him in a senatorial campaign. " Doug- 
las' life is all success ; mine all failure. I 
would give all my years and chances to have 
the opportunity that has come to him, of do- 
ing something to lift up the oppressed." 

The conscientious, thoughtful young man, 
who has been obliged to give up his school 
life, can hardly bite back the bitter ouestion, 
"Why doesn't God give me a little chance 
to be somebody ? He knows I want to do 
good. I mean to use all my strength to help 
others, but I am baulked at every point. I 
can't understand it." Let me whisper a word 
in your ear. God never blunders, and He is 
never careless. As a father pitieth his chil- 
dren, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. 
He delights in the prosperity of His children. 
If 1 r take* away what seems to you most 



OUT OF SCHOOL. 65 

desirable and essential, it is th?,t Tie may 
give you something that He regards hi bet- 
ter for you. 

Which reached the goal of the nation's 
love, the world's honor, and the Christly op- 
portunity, Douglas or Lincoln ? 

A young man who had been obliged to leave 
school, was quite rebellious about it. He 
had to go to work on a farm with his Quaker 
uncle, to save his health from complete wreck. 
One day, while they were in the field, he 
gave expression to his despair over what he 
regarded the failure of his life. The old man 
had seen many a dashing fellow shoot up like 
a rocket, and come down as suddenly, and he 
knew something of God's strength and pa- 
tience. He leaned on his hoe, and pushed 
back his old straw hat : — 

" Now see here, John," he said, " thee '11 
learn in time that God's ways are right, all 
right and always right. When He wants thee 
to have Greek and Latin, He has ways enough 
to give thee Greek and Latin. If He 



66 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

does n't want thee to have them, thee 'd bet- 
ter let them alone, and have no more words 
abont it. Thee '11 find in the end that God's 
way is always the right one." 

44 But," you say, 44 1 am not at all sure that 
it is the Lord who has put me under these 
disabilities. If I had taken care of my health 
when I had it," or, " If I had not been led 
into that folly," or, 44 If my father had been a 
sober man," or, 44 If my brother had not been 
so selfishly ambitious, I might have had a 
chance." Regrets cannot change the facts. 

44 Let the dead past bury its dead." The 
Lord might remove those disabilities, but He 
does not choose to do so. The only wise 
thing for you is to accept the facts as you 
find them now, using all your strength in 
making the most of the chances that are left. 
The only safe thing is to trust the case im- 
plicitly with the Lord. Pindar says, " The 
gods themselves cannot undo the action that 
is done." When our God forgives our sins 
He puts us into the same relation with 



OUT OF SCHOOL. 37 

Himself that a child would have who had 
never sinned. When you give yourself fully 
into His hands, He takes you to make the 
most possible of you for His service. He 
may let obstacles come in your way to devel- 
op your ability to overcome difficulties. We 
are the better soldiers for every battle, the 
better sailors for every storm. What you 
want to gain by a liberal education, is not 
the privilege of saying, "I have a piece of 
parchment given me by the faculty and 
trustees of such a college, certifying that I 
spent so much time under their care, and 
passed examination in such and such text- 
books.' 9 No ; the result sought is the devel- 
opment of your mental powers so that they 
can be relied on for right action in the affairs 
of life. Natural history teaches to observers 
illustrated by Agassiz' fish lesson ; not alone 
to observe insects and reptiles, plants and 
minerals, but facts, phenomena, events, cur- 
rents of thought, trade, literature, people. 
Mathematical drill helps to power for sustain- 



68 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

ed, continuoub thought. If you lose your 
hold of a problem in the process of solution, 
you will lose your work, and have it all to do 
over, as if you had dropped a bucket of wa- 
ter that you were drawing up out of a well. 
The ability to think without letting go till 
you have mastered a theme, is usually the se- 
cret of success in any business. It is said of 
Socrates, though I must confess the story has 
a mythical smack, that while he was in the 
army he stood stock-still twenty-four hours 
in the rain, his comrades marching on, and 
leaving him while he followed a thought 
through all its relations and involvements. 
Languages make one think nimbly. In the 
steady flow of thought he must catch up the 
foreign word and fit it to the idea with the 
quickness of a flash, or he will find himself 
stupidl)- at fault. 

The knots and tangles that are thrown in 
a student's way, in all departments, are to 
teach him to concentrate his powers on a 
given point, that whatever his hands find to 
do, he may do it with his might. 



OUT OP SCHOOL. 6# 

Not one in ten of college graduates get 
this, or any large part of it, out of the course 
of study. The world would be much wiser 
than it is, if they did. Many go through, in 
a jolly, easy way, getting over the ground 
with as little trouble as possible. Others 
struggle through after a doltish, stupid, wood- 
en fashion, their objective point being to say 
they have been through coll ge. 

What you want is the strength for good 
work that four years of honest, hard study, 
will give. Since it is denied you to get it in 
the ordinary way, if you can get it by other 
means all will yet be well. Let us see. God 
has given you that thirst for knowledge, that 
eagerness for books. He has also given you 
to see the greatness of His work, to desire a 
part in it, and to fit yourself to do what will 
be strong and telling. Now, will He not be 
pleased in some way to supply your lack? 
If this result of a liberal education is a real 
need, is it not provided for in the promise, 
44 My God shall supply all your need accord 
ing to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus"? 



70 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

What has been done may be done. I know 
a woman who had ma^y a battle, sharp and 
bitter, because she was hedged by ill health 
and poverty from the studies in which she 
delighted. At twenty-eight she gave herself 
fully to the l/*rd, and trusted Him to cleanse 
her from all sin. Then, with purified motives, 
she asked God to help her get the education 
for which her heart had always clamored. 
She asked it for His glory, that she might do 
more for Him. Everything seemed to be in 
the way of the answer. Her physician told 
her that even a light degree of brain work 
would probably result in paralysis. An ocu- 
list, one of the best on the continent, told 
her, after a close examination of her eyes, 
that if she would give them perfect rest for 
six months, and then come back to him, he 
would tell her if there was any hope for her 
to escape the threatened paralysis of the 
retina. God did not work any signs or won- 
ders in answer to her prayer, but He gave 
her strength for work, day after day. She 



OUT OF SCHOOL. 71 

began a course of reading, and to write for 
the papers, in a darkened room, with a little 
light coming in over one shoulder. She also 
took up the study of German, though she 
could not tell a "B" from a "V" without 
turning the book sidewise. She could not 
afford a teacher, and she could spare only 
fifteen minutes a day for her German, because 
she did her own house-work, light, heavy and 
all; the sewing for her family, and everything 
possible for her in the church and Sunday- 
school, beside entertaining no end of company. 
She made one little rule when she began, and 
she adhered to it rigidly. She held herself 
under bonds for an actual fifteen minutes 
of study each day ; and if she failed one day 
she had to make it up as soon as possible. 
She could read German readily before she 
was in circumstances to study a single hour 
without work in her hands. She did not go 
through all the text-books of a college course, 
but she had the result of the drill as cer- 
tainly as she would if she had graduated in 



72 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

her youth. At forty she was carrying a 
heavy benevolent work, editing a monthly 
paper, and filling a professorship in a uni- 
versity. She had learned to hold herself in- 
exorably to a given duty at a given time, as 
if she obeyed the call of a college bell four 
years. She could fix her attention on the 
thing in hand as well, probably, as if she had 
been under the stimulus of class emulation 
and professorial influence a given period. 
She could make the shuttle of her thought 
fly as nimbly through the web of affairs, as 
if she had translated the college Greek and 
Latin, with the German and French thrown 
in. If many others have tried to do the 
same thing and failed, it is possibly because 
they did not trust God as she was driven to 
do when everything was against her. 

I have a friend who was fettered and held 
back in his boyhood from the education he 
was most eager to acquire. At eighteen he 
succeeded in getting off to a literary institu 
lion for a few months, and he determined to 



OUT OF SCHOOL* 73 

make the most of his chance. He carried 
ten studies. By a masterful effort he obliged 
himself to throw all his strength upon a given 
point, and when that was conquered, upon 
another. By that means he learned his les- 
sons in the shortest possible time. You may 
be sure he had no leisure for revery or castle 
building, nor for college mischief. In those 
few months he had more actually helpful 
drill than most students do in a full course 
of study. At twenty-six, before most young 
men are fairly in the saddle, he had built up 
a heavy business, and he was making money 
by the thousands. His success was the result 
of a habit formed in his lonely, cramped, 
home study, and in his short, school drill. 
When he sat at his desk with a heavy trans- 
action on hand> he would throw all his 
strength upon it, quite unconscious of what 
was passing in the room. A dozen men 
might be talking around him, but he knew 
nothing that they said, till his head clerk 
gave him to understand that he must attend 



74 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

to something else that could no longer be 
neglected. Then, as Dickens used to turn 
the key of his room to lock in the characters 
of the story upon which he was busy, telling 
them to wait till he could come to them 
again, so this young man would lay aside the 
business upon which he was at work, take up 
the other matter and arrange it, and then go 
back to the first, losing himself in it as be- 
fore, holding every thread clearly and with- 
out entanglement. 

Abraham Lincoln was in school only six 
months of his life, and a little backwoods 
affair it was at that. When he began to take 
hold of national questions he used to lie on 
the lounge in his office, watching the flies on 
the ceiling, as it seemed, but as he said after- 
ward, " bounding the subject in hand, north, 
south, east and west." He was tracking out 
its relation to all other questions, and find- 
ing the exact principles of right involved. 
When the hour struck he was ready to take 
the helm, and hold steady in the storm the 



OUT OF SCHOOL. 75 

ship in which we were all sailing, and that 
seemed to be driving straight upon the rocks. 

It is certain that the mental strength 
gained by a college course may be secured in 
other ways, and in ways from whiuh one with 
average ability can hardly be hedged. 

The first thing, I would advise you to give 
your case into the hands of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Tell him that you choose His will in 
this matter. He may mean you to stay here 
so short a time that there is none to spare in 
preparation. He may have some plain, 
simple work for you that he prefers you to 
t&he up at once, deferring your larger 
intellectual development till you get into 
the other world. Deliberately lay aside your 
own plans, and choose His, whatever they 
may prove to be, no matter how they may go 
against your inclination. I never shall forget 
the hour when I made that surrender. One 
afternoon when the Holy Spirit sent Hia 
light into the depths of my soul, I discovered, 
hidden away, like the wedge of gold in 



76 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

Achan's tent, a determination to work, and 
study, ctnd make something of myself. Not 
that I might win the wealth and honors of 
the world, but I would make for myself a 
dainty, little snuggery into which I would 
bring a few fine books and pictures, some 
good music, and a coterie of choice friends. 
The loud, rough, coarse, old world might wag 
its way, and not a whit would I care for its 
tinsel and show ; nor its troubles, either, — 
do you see ? The Lord in kindness threw a 
picture upon the canvas that day, that gave 
me to see how wickedly selfish was my little 
scheme. I saw myself in a hospital with 
scores of people who were dying, and there 
was no one to give them their medicine, or 
even a cup of cold water. I had been sent 
there under orders to help all whom I could 
possibly reach ; and there I was, planning to 
fit up ni3 T exquisite little room, in one corner, 
its vails padded to shut out the groans, and 
to shut in the delicacy and beauty that I 
hoped to gather about me. I saw that 



OUT OF SCHOOL, 77 

selfishness like that could never get into 
Heaven. The word was, " If any man Iw£ 
not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His." 
" He came to seek and to save that which was 
lost." " Though he was rich, yet for our sakes 
He became poor, that we through His poverty 
might be made rich." When I saw that, I was 
enabled to say, " I give it all up. Henceforth 
for me, only Thy will, and Thy work." The 
pain of the surrender was so severe that a 
knife seemed to pierce my heart, and th.3 
tears leaped from my eyes. Let me add that 
all these years, just in proportion as I have 
held myself loyal to that surrender, has God 
given me richly to enjoy the things that I 
put aside to accept His will. 

Having given all into His hands, you ask 
Him to make all your motives pure ; and then 
you set about making the most of yourself 
for His sake, and that you may do His work 
to the best advantage. You will find Him 
constantly helping you from that hour, and 
more abundantly as you trust Him more 



78 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE, 

".inplicitly. You surrender without condi- 
tions, as to a monarch whose claims you had 
neglected, but whose right to rule, you are 
forced to acknowledge. To your surprise, 
you find Him the tenderest, most loving, and 
helpful Father, the strongest, truest Friend. 

He may not see fit to give you a collegiate 
course, but He will help to you the mental 
drill you need in order to do His work 
properly. In the light that He gives, you 
will discover your mental defects, and by 
what efforts you can master them. 

He will probably lead you quite against 
your natural inclination. One to whom 
mathematics are easy usually needs linguistic 
drill, to teach him quickness of thought. If 
he prefers the languages, he will probably 
need mathematics to help him to continuity 
of thinking. If you are fond of public excite- 
ment and occasions, the Lord will be very apt 
to shut you up to quiet and retirement. If 
you have whims and fancies that make you 
rsserved and exclusive, he will be apt to 



OUT OF SCHOOL. 79 

keep you a great deal before the people. 
This for your own better development, and 
because you are more likely to lean on His 
strength, and so give Him a chance to help 
you in the line in which you do not feel 
yourself at home. Be all that as it may, if 
you put yourself in His handc, and trust 
Him implicitly, He will fit you up for the 
best work and give you the best scope for 
your ability. 

George Muller, who has been used of God 
for such a marvelous faith work in England, 
began while he was a student asking God to 
help him with his studies. His faith has 
sent a thrill through the entire Christian 
church. 

With God's blessing human perseverance 
and industry may be almost limitless in results. 
All things are possible with God, and all 
things are possible to Him that believeth. 



CHAPTER V. 

YOUR OWN WAY TO MAKE, 

What I have to say to my class of twenty 
thousand under this head, may not just 
now be applicable to all, but there is no 
knowing how soon it may be of interest to 
the richest, in this uncertain America, where 
we have no entailed estates, and property 
currents change most readily. 

In talking to young men who are poor, I 
mean, of course, only in finance. A man 
may not have a penny in his pocket, 
and yet have superb muscle. Indeed, the 
chances in that line are increased by poverty, 
for we are too indolent to exercise properly 
unless we are driven to do so for our daily 
bread ; and only the muscle that is used to 
the utmost of its capability has full strength. 
80 



YOUB OWN WAY TO MAKE. 81 

Feel of a blacksmith's arm, and then take 
hold of that of a delicate young fellow who 
has had some easy, indoor avocation. It 
will not do to let them test their strength in 
a tussle, for fear the sturdy mechanic will 
annihilate the dainty little man. It is too 
palpable to need proof that no muscle is firm 
and strong, unless it is constantly and vigor- 
ously used. One may make some dilettant 
attempts at muscular culture in a boat-club, 
or gymnastic class, but he is not apt to give 
himself to the business with sufficient energy 
and perseverance to bring the result, unless 
he is obliged to eat his bread by the sweat of 
his brow. 

You who are poor have usually the better 
physical outfit; and for the same reasons, 
you may not be behind in mental vigor; 
while the probabilities of moral excellence 
may also be in your favor. Mean, cringing, 
selfish people, flatter and cajole those who 
have money, and so are able to help them in 
the struggle f 01 gain. That develops egotism 



82 PROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

in the rich, and nothing more surely kills the 
spiritual life. The offences of the rich are 
overlooked on account of their moneyed im- 
portance, and they become careless about 
moral obligation. The self-indulgence which 
is so easy and natural when one has wealth, 
is a deadly enemy to noble, unselfish, 
Christian character. Please understand, I do 
not mean that all rich young men have 
suffered mental and moral loss on account of 
their difficult surroundings. That is the 
risk, however, and our Lord must have had it 
in view when He said, " How hardly shall 
they that have riches enter into the kingdom 
of Heaven." 

The poor have also their special tempta- 
tions. They may have physical injury from 
over-work. They become so weary with 
their drudgery that they take light, frothy 
amusements, and even those that are coarse 
and disgusting, to make them forget their 
hardships. They do not always use their 
leisure on good books. They get a false 



YOUR OWN WAY TO MAKE* 83 

estimate of character, and look upon getting 
money as the one thing to be desired. They 
make haste to be rich, and fall into hurtful 
and deceitful lusts that drown men in destruc- 
tion and perdition. 

They are quite apt to succeed in getting 
"filthy lucre," for the currents of wealth 
move by law as certainly as do the tides of 
the sea ; and economy and industry usually 
strike that law, and find the current sought. 
But in getting money they miss the greater 
and better things. They find at last that 
riches fail utterly to feed the hunger of the 
mind, the cravings of the soul. 

Have you ever noticed how seldom you 
see a " successful " old man with a sweet, 
beautiful face? He has either the keen, 
secretive phiz of a fox, the sharp, dangerous 
expression of the wolf, or the brow-beating, 
terrorizing look of a bull-dog. You treat 
him respectfully, because he holds the purs**- 
strings with a stout grip ; and, as you whisper 
in the ear of your friend, you must keep the 



34 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

right side of the old codger; but you are 
always relieved when he nods you out of the 
office. Look in the glass and imagine your- 
self at sixty carrying about such a face as 
that! 

He is a self-made man, he says, with a 
significant look toward his safe; and you 
wonder at his complacency over such a disa- 
greeable piece of work. He may wax con- 
fidential, and tell you how he got his start, 
and how he got ahead of So-and^ So in such- 
and-such a race, and you cannot help think- 
ing that, after all, the result has hardly paid 
for the trouble. He is a church member, and 
is conspicuous on all important occasions; 
but he is the last one to whom you would go 
to be shown how to get near the Lord. You 
would as soon think of consulting the ledger 
or the daily paper to find the way of life, as 
to ask him about it. He is poor, but not in 
spirit; for he has been made to think that 
he does pretty well if he pays more to the 
church than others do; albeit, they give 



YOUR OWN WAY TO MiXB. 85 

relatively ten times more than he does ; so he 
is wretchedly poor, spiritually. 

You have your own way to make, and 
perhaps I can give you a few suggestions 
that will be helpful. I would ^ay in the 
outset, tak^ an objective view of yourself, 
and decide what you hsd better bv and do. 
Too many drift with tht* current, borne this 
way or that, by thu strongest influence that 
strikes them, instead of finding the thing to 
which they are best adapted, and aiming at 
excellence in that line. By the time they 
are thirty they can do several thing? passably 
well, but they excel in nothing, and they 
settle down into tin mass of the mediocre. 
They remind one of a certain old Atlantic 
Mcvt\ly article of which I remember only 
the title, " Concerning people oi whom more 
might have been made." These "might 
have beens " are not a comfortable or happy 
set of people. They are the driftwood oi 
society, and we are continually thinking 
that they ar^ failing to meet the purpose *& 
their existence. 



86 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

In making a plan of your life, suppose you 
lay it off in sections ot twenty years each* 
The first section is probably behind you. 
The first quarter of it, the main business 
seemed to b , to develop your legs and lungs. 
The second quarter you were rinning hither 
and thither on your uncertain feet, as fancy 
or whim impelled you, picking up an immense 
deal of information about the me and the 
not-me; the chief work being to secure a 
suitable physical outfit, ?nd to train some- 
what your five senses. Steps had already 
been taken toward giving the little kn:.mal a 
systematic, mental drill, and teaching him 
the bounds of morality. The latter half of 
yoiir first twenty years have been devoted 
largely to these things with varying Siivcess. 
You can read, write, and speak your mother 
tongue with fluency; and you have dipped 
into another language or so. You have a 
gtneral idea of the rudiments of the elemen- 
tal y sciences. 

Belug born cf Christian parents, and 



YOUR OWN WAY TO MAKE, 87 

having studied the Bible more or less, you 
have an invaluable frame-work of cL*/:*eter 
\n ;he way of moral principles, infinitely 
better than it was possible for Zoroaster, 
Aristotle, Socrates, or even "the divine 
Plato " to attempt. The ten commandments 
have been mortised xlujO your life ; and you 
could not do a fal&3 or dishonest thing with- 
out laying violent hands on your convictions. 

The second section, from twenty U) forty, 
will be the active, up-hill part of the way. 
You must plan it carefully. The third section, 
il-om forty to sfcty, will be your harvest 
years. If by reason of strength you reach 
fourscore, from sixty to eighty you ought to 
have the broadest usefulness, and the most 
complete and restful enjoyment, 

In choosing your line <y! work, yt u need 
special Divine guidance. You cannot trust 
yourself to find the way alont,. When 
Thales was ijgked, "What is the hardest 
thing in the worlc ? " his reply was, " To 
know thyself ." If the old philosopher found 



83 . &CM FDT^EN TO TWEXTY-FIVB. 

self-knowledge so difficult, how dares an un- 
tra'cted boy claim to know his own ability 
and adaptability so as to take the helm of 
sel^-direction? 

The judgment of your friends can no more 
be trusted than your own. Was it Holmes 
who said that every calf that bleats in the 
meadow is a genuine Osiris to its dam? 
None but God ] nows what you are meant 
for; an.l your only nope for a successful life 
is to find and work to His plan. If you fall 
below that, you will always have a sense of 
incompleteness and dissatisfaction. If yo: 
aspire above it, failure is inevitable. No 
matter wb&t ;hat plan may be, its authorsrro 
;.s your patent of nobility. God's will makes 
it grand. 

S:^3 one ha? said that : 1 the Lord were 
to send an angel down into this world to 
sweep th* street crossing o, and another to 
rule °.n empire, they could not by any means 
be induced to exchange. The work of the 
forme- wou'd b^m to >im as noble as that 



YOUR OWN WAY TO MAKE. 89 

of the latter, because it had as certainly the 
Btamp of the Divine approval. 

When you decide to take God's plan of 
your life, and seek with implicit trust to find 
it, He will see that you make no mistake. 
Put your hand in His, and He will guide you 
where He wants you to go. He has promised 
to lead the blind ir. j r/ths that they have not 
known. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, 
and He shall direct thy paths. This is as cer- 
tainly true in temporal as in spiritual affaira. 
Bazaleel, upon whom Moses had to depend 
for some of the dificult work on the taber- 
nacle wl-.en they were out there in the wilder- 
ness, was wi£3-hearted and filled with the 
Spirit of the Lcro ; and God taught him a 
half-dcs^n different trades. If our Heavenly 
Father did that once, He may do it again. 
O^e case demonstrates His ability. "But 
that was a long time ago." There *\re no 
years with God. If those fugitives f^ora 
Egyptian slavery, away back there in the 
twilight of the oW dispensation, could get 



90 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

near enough to God to be so taught, what 
may we not hope for in the cumulative light 
of nineteen Christian centuries ? " But Baz<> 
leel had a special work to do." Yes; and 
so have you, if you are in God's hand foi 
service. Quite likely it is not a work that 
will set a corps of reporters scribbling every 
time you turn round ; out it is one that will 
be forever un~vrought unless you set your 
hand to its accomplishment Your failure to 
find and do it, will mi,r by just so much, 
God's perfect plan. Your success will add 
just so much to His glorj 

The majority of my class of twer.vy tnous- 
sand have failed to secure a liberal educa- 
tion. You who are of that number, have 
given up "going through college," and you 
are obliged to turn your attention to the 
question of getting your ovm living. Tne 
time for the breaking up of the old home 
seems to be drawing near. The dear circle 
will not hold together much longer. Older 
brothers and sisters ar3 marrying off and 



YOUR OWN WAY TO MAKE. 91 

making homes of their own. and you cannot 
help thinking of a similar future. You must 
go to work in earnest to establish yourself in 
the line that has been marked out for you. 

In the very outset you must form a habit 
of industry. Be diligent in business. Dili- 
gence is from the Latin, M diligentia" ; that is 
from the verb " diligo" to love earnestly, and 
that is from di and lego, to choose. So the 
command, " Be diligent " mean: that yo^i are 
to choose and love earnestly what you believe 
God wants you to do. What your hand finds 
to do, is to be don& heartily, as unto the 
Lord. Do not go to your work with a hang- 
dog look or feeling, nor take hold of it in a 
gingerly Fa/, as if you felt above it ; but 
carry it bravely and gladly because you 
Jicose tu do what is given you, with your 
might. 

Make up your mind that you are not g(-mg 
to succeed without hard work. No matter if 
you do not love it naturally, be determined 
that you will not shirk it, but you will bear 



e 9 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

your full part manfudy. The one who wins 
is he who prepares most carefully for his 
work, does it most thoroughly, holding him- 
self steadily in hand, and who keeps on after 
the rest have given out and given up. 

Perhaps you have that " fatal facility of 
speech " that makes you think you might dis- 
tinguish yourself in some avocation where 
talk seem3 to be the stock in trade. Easy 
speaking and shallow thinking usually go to- 
gether. It is only the deep, sure, strong 
thought, that takes the prize Gurfac* talents 
are usually like fool's gold, glittering and 
value less. Remember to make haste slowly 

^n Rome, where they build for th3 cental 
ries, they dig down to the living rock to lay 
the base-stones of their palaces. The foun- 
dation is sometimes the most exper-sive p**rt 
of the building. 

Toil would not build a pyramid apex down- 
w rd. If yov. lay carelessly or narrowly the 
foundation of /our character or your fortune, 
it friL. topple over in the first hurricane. 



YOtTR OW> W\Y TO MAXE. 93 

You want to form a habit of working tlit 
lessly, faithfully, i^ndi scours geaiy. Grant 
said of himself at cMJoh. "I thought I was 
going to fail, but 1 itept right on." To for ._* 
a habit of keeping right on will be worth 
everything to you. 

Ninety-five per cent, of business men fail. 
You are trying for the twentieth chance, the 
one that succeeds. If you secure it, it wil 1 
not be from good luck, but by God's blessing 
upon honest, faithful, persistent, hard work. 

You. must see to it that you form exact 
business habits. Learn to be prompt in keep- 
ing your engagements. Your time and that 
of the few people with whom you are associ- 
ated, may not be worth much now, but by and 
by, if you get on as you hope to do, you will 
juave business with those who can earn five, 
ten, fifteen dollars an hour. Suppose you 
keep six of them waiting fifteen minutes, 
you were needed to make a quorum, or to 
complete some transaction. You have wasted 
an liour and a half of expensive time, besides 



94 FROM FL<TTEEN TO rWWTY-FIVE. 

taking the risk of the strain or, their temper, 
a A theii confidence in your reliability. Let 
it be? understood that when you say you will 
bo at a given place, a^ a given hour, you can 
he depended upon to appear at least a half 
mmute before the time. Hold your business 
so in hand that you can make detinite prem- 
ises with a fair prospect of being able to keep 
them. Never attempt so much that you are 
i lable to make good your word, and so get a 
reputation for unreliability. When monetary 
cyclones sweep over the land, it will be worth 
thousands to you, if good, solid business men, 
can say of you, " He will do as he says. 
His word can be taken for any amount th^t 
he promises." 

After all, no matter how much money you 
make, nor how many friends you seem to 
have, unless you are so honest that you are 
not afraid to have God inspect your books, you 
are an unmitigated failure. In other words, 
there is no success worth the name except 
that which strikes root in moral probity. 



TOUB OWN WAY TO MAKE. 95 

The Bible srys, " The just man walketh in 
his integrity " That sturdy word is from 
the Latin, meaning ur.tcuched. It is first 
cousin to the mathematical term, integer, * 
whole, or unbroken number. There must be 
a wholeness of your obedience to the right, 
your loyalty to conscience, even when the 
currents are heavy, and strong enough to 
swe^p most men from their moorings. 

/.here is a system of false weights and 
measures in use in the world. People ar°* 
marked not at what they ar^, but at what 
they possess. Whatever others may say or 
do, let us see to it that our own stand rds 
are right. Otherwise we are not sure that 
we will give otters their due. Let m^ give 
you a test by which you can determine 
whether or not you have the true standard of 
values. If you find yourself hanging vour 
head for honest poverty, h you are ashamed :it 
the plainness of your dress, the awkwardness 
of your manners, or the lack 01 polish in your 
speech, you may be sure that you n^ed tc 



96 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

correct your table of values. Unless you 
see the nobility of a soul in alliance with 
God, and respect yourself so muoh as to be 
independent of slights and snubs, the proba- 
bility is that you would be haughty and 
supercilious, if a change in affairs gave you 
the opportunity to lord it oyer others. 

The higher English nobility, with their 
miles of elegant domain, their castles smd 
palaccb, are not half so lofty in bearing, nor 
so exclusive, as some of their servants. They 
are so assured 'n their position, that they cai 
afford to be simple and affable. 

Be sure from the first to plan your business 
so as to save time for the carp of your body 
and the culture of your mind and soul. Of 
wbau use would it be for you to find your- 
self rich at fifty, but with broken health, 
your mind cramped to a knowledge of your 
ledger and prices current, and your soul so 
dwarfed that if it could get into heaven at 
all, it would be a pitiful little weazen thing 
fit only for the lowest place &nd the narrowest 
enjoyment. 



YOUB OWN WAY TO MAKE. 97 

Above all, remember that it is the blessing 
of God that maketh rich, and addeth no 
sorrow. 

You must not forget the claims of benevo- 
lence. The only safe plan is to give by rule* 
A tenth is the Scriptural percentage. 

You will find a rigid system of giving to 
be economical. You will have to manage 
carefully each piece of property that comes 
into your hands, so that you may know its 
annual profit, in order to be sure that you 
give your tenth. This will keep you from 
the slip-shod financiering that is the cause of 
most of the financial failures. 

God must have control of your business, 
not only in its principles and management, 
but in the amount of pressure you will permit 
to come on you to crowd you to greater 
effort. 

A young business man who had done un- 
usual things in the way of Christian work 
and giving, was asked his rale in this matter. 
In reply he showed a note in his memoran- 



98 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

dum book that read over a given date, " Prom 
this time I will make the service of God 
my business, and do business only to pay ex- 
penses." 



CHAPTER VI. 

BICH. 

The rich young men have read what I 
have said to the poor about the uncertainties 
and dangers of having wealth ; yet there are 
other risks of which I wish to speak. 

Wealth gives opportunity for the best cul- 
ture, and that represents power to do good. 
Money buys leisure, books, and travel, all of 
which add to personal influence. Power in- 
creases obligation. If one knows of another's 
need, and has the ability to help, he is culpa- 
ble if he fails to meet the obligation. 

The world is perishing. Thousands suffer 
for food and clothing. Multitudes are in 
mental want, myraids in spiritual destitution. 
Your money might give shelter to the home- 
less, medicine to the sick, all manner of com- 

99 



100 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

forts to the neglected poor, books and teach- 
ers to the ignorant, and missionaries to the 
abandoned. If you spend it on your own 
pleasures and leave them to perish, their blood 
may be required at your hand. 

Woe betide the soul on which rests the 
curse of unwrought good ! There is no 
"might have been" more unutterably and 
fatefully sad. The hungry eyes of the un- 
helped will glare throughout eternity on the 
one who might have been their benefactor. 
He never can escape their reproaches. The 
rich man in hell did not want his five broth- 
ers to come to that place of torment ; for he 
knew that his wealth, morality, and conse- 
quent influence, might have led them to the 
Lord for salvation. With his characteristic 
selfishness he wanted to be spared the lash of 
their terrible upbraidings. 

There is great danger that the rich will fail 
in self-denial. Christ's plan for saving peo- 
ple begins with the thrusting out of self, and 
leads to a crucifixion. It was founded in 



KIOB* 101 

sacrifice. Self-giving is its most characteris- 
tic expression. The rich have special temp- 
tations to go in the opposite direction. The 
world has its wares in the market. The rich 
are its best customers ; and it spares no pains 
or ingenuity to get their money for its prod- 
ucts. One who carries a full purse is tempt- 
ed on every hand to purchase things that ap- 
peal to the five senses ; and it is easy to form 
a habit of self-gratification, and consequent 
indifference to the wants of others. Self-de- 
nial, always a difficult grace, becomes harder 
when self is thus pampered. 

Covetousness is a cardinal fault even with 
Christians. One of the twelve, though serv- 
ing a Master who was dependent for His dai- 
ly support upon the charity of women who 
risked all to become His followers, — one of 
the little body-guard fell, through this sin, 
and went to his own place by suicide. Few 
are exempt from this temptation ; but the 
rich are in more danger than the poor. The 
tendency of possession is to increase the love 



102 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

of gain. This is an insidious vice, and it will 
steal over you like the poison of malaria. 
You may not be able to tell just when it first 
touches you; but unless you are divinely 
guarded, you will yield to its power when 
riches increase, as certainly as a stranger who 
sleeps on the Roman Campagna succumbs to 
malaria. 

While the young are in less danger than 
those of mature years, yet, as in most phys- 
ical diseases, probably the trouble begins in 
the careless habits of youth. At any rate, 
systematic giving is a safeguard. 

You will find it harder to give a tenth of 
your income than you would if you were 
poor. It ought to be easier, for the remain- 
ing nine-tenths are a far more ample support 
than they would be if the income were small. 
If one has a salary of a thousand a year, and 
gives a hundred dollars, he has only nine hun- 
dred left for his living ; but if his income is 
ten thousand a year, he has nine thousand 
left for himself. His thousand looks large, 



BIOH. 103 

but it represents really less sacrifice than the 
poor man's hundred. Some, indeed, I fear 
many, who begin by giving liberally, draw 
back, and give less proportionately with the 
Increase of wealth, because the sums begin 
50 look large, and are beyond the average be- 
aevolence of well-to-do people. I remember 
a man during the war, who owned a mill that 
produced an article which came suddenly in- 
to great demand in the army. He had prom- 
ised to give the Lord a tenth of his profits ; 
but when he found that he would clear thir- 
ty thousand dollars that year, it seemed quite 
too much to count out three thousand for be- 
nevolence. He broke his vow. Within a 
few days his mill was in ashes; and before it 
could be re-built, the special demand had cre- 
ated its own supply, and so cut down his 
profits to the usual rates. When you make 
up your mind that it is safe and right to give 
a tenth to the Lord's work, let the decision 
be made for life. Regard it as a debt, and 
attend to its payment as rigidly and conscien- 
tiously as you do to that of any other. 



104 FKOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE* 

Another temptation to covetousness comes 
from the fact that the increase of wealth be- 
comes more rapid, proportionately, as its 
amount increases. One can invest ten thou- 
sand more easily, to better advantage, and 
with hope of larger gain than he can one 
thousand. It is true, also, that with added 
increase of importance from ownership, there 
is a rising ratio of increase in the desire for 
gain. 

There is something decidedly attractive in 
becoming a bank president, a railroad mon- 
arch, a money king. People recognize readily 
the ability to grant favors, and they are de- 
lighted to reciprocate. Do you remember 
some lines in one of our old school-readers 
that ran something like this : — 

"So goes the world ; if you are wealthy, 
You may call 
This, friend, that, brother, 
Friends and brothers, all." 

There is no use in denying that this is 
pleasant and engrossing. One is not in con- 



KICH. 105 

dition to see how empty and hollow it is, till 
the money takes wings, as it has an awkward 
habit of doing. These delicate flatteries and 
attentions are like exquisite music. They 
drown the cry of the needy. Like palace 
walls and broad, beautiful grounds, they shut 
out the ghastly eyes of the starving. They 
hide, as under a bank of bloom, the chain 
that binds together all sinning, suffering hu- 
man souls. They cannot sever that chain, 
for it is as unbreakable as that which holds 
the planets in their orbits, as tireless as gravi- 
tation, as relentless as destiny. 

As the years go by you may lose the fresh- 
ness and tenderness of youth ; you may be- 
come worn and blase with the round of 
pleasures purchased by your wealth, and the 
added cares from its increase. You will dis- 
like to be bored with tiresome stories and 
petty complaints. Gradually others will 
come between you and the poor with whom 
you might come in contact, those whom you 
employ. You do not mean to be hard and 



106 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

unfeeling, but abuses grow up into which it is 
not convenient nor agreeable for you to look. 
Subordinates will make everything appear 
smooth and plausible, but God will hear the 
sighing of the needy, and you will be the one 
whom He will hold responsible. Upon you 
will come the woe. 

When the rich young ruler ran through 
the crowd and threw himself down before the 
carpenter's son, asking to be taught the way 
of life, our Lord saw that there were no 
hoof-marks of vice on his face. In that dis- 
solute land and time, amid all the temptations 
that wealth brings, and the sins that its pos- 
session makes people condone, that young 
man could lift a clear, steady eye, to the 
Teacher, and respond to His question about 
the commandments. " All these have I kept 
from my youth up." Jesus loved him, for 
He saw in him the basis of a strong, noble, 
Christian character. He saw, also, that a se- 
cret, hidden selfishness, that most obscure and 
unyielding disease, had taken possession of 



RICH. 107 

the soul of the young ruler. In his child- 
hood he had been flattered and fawned upon, 
till he had come to believe himself better 
than the common herd. " I belong to anoth- 
er grade of human beings. Of course I 
will be kind and helpful, and give something 
of my surplus means to add to their comfort, 
but as to giving myself to them in any sense, 
why, that is not to be thought of." Christ 
saw that this case must have heroic treatment, 
or the fine, spiritual young fellow, would 
grow to be a grasping, avaricious, hard-heart- 
ed, iron-handed, old Jew, with a face as dry 
and wrinkled as his bonds, and as yellow as 
his gold, and a nose as sharp and hooked as 
the beak of a bird of prey. 

Christ's command for him to sell all that 
he had and give to the poor, touched like a 
lance his hidden, deep-seated selfishness. 
He started to his feet. What ! give up all 
his schemes for the spread and improvement 
of his great possessions ! Turn his grounds 
and palaces, his wardrobes, jewels, articles of 



108 FEOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

virtu, all oyer to others, and distribute their 
value among the leprous, unwashed poor, 
while he tramped over the country with 
this pauper Rabbi, as poverty-stricken as the 
poorest of those whom he had always held in 
contempt ! Surely there must be some mis- 
take about that. There certainly ought to be 
some way for him to secure eternal life, bet- 
ter suited to his rank and station, than this 
hard, unconditional surrender of all. He 
turned his back on Christ, and walked slow- 
ly away, while the deep, sad eyes of the 
Master, followed him lovingly. He knew 
how that innate selfishness would ruin him, 
here and hereafter ; and his only chance ol 
salvation was in breaking every tie that held 
him to his old life, and giving himself with- 
out stint to the helping of others. 

Christ required of him simply what he 
asks of every soul that He saves. Only so 
can He cure the cancer of self-love and trust. 
Only on those terms can one hope for useful- 
ness here, and life beyond the grave. 



EIOH. 109 

Not that you are to deed your property 
away to some benevolent institution, while 
you give your entire time to the service and 
instruction of the poor ; but you are to hold 
it simply as God's steward. The great 
change is in your spirit. No longer owner, 
but steward, ready to disburse on call of the 
real owner. You are to say, " Henceforth I 
will hold every dollar subject to the Divine 
order, paying never less than ten per cent, of 
the profits — a light interest, surely — into 
His treasury. I will invest as carefully 
the part that He takes, as I do what He leaves 
for my use. I will look to Him for direction 
in the management of it all, not venturing to 
spend so much as five cents without a motive 
that I dare take to the Judgment. 

" More than that, I will give the poor a 
sympathy and fellowship that is worth infi- 
nitely more than all the wealth I can bestow 
on them. As Christ came down out of 
Heaven, making Himself one of us that He 



110 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

might save us, I will take upon my heart 
the troubles of the poor, giving my very self 
for their salvation and help." 



CHAPTER Vn. 

m BUSINESS. 

I have already had occasion to tell you 
that only five per cent, of business men es- 
cape failure. Many, with a feeble sort of fa- 
talism, blame their luck when things go 
wrong with them. They flatter themselves 
that it is no fault of theirs that they do not 
get on better. " A. is a lucky dog. He was 
born with a silver spoon in his mouth ; but I 
— somehow things always go against me." 

Now the real luck that brings success 
comes from the skillful management of well- 
invested capital. 

"Capital!" you exclaim; "I have no 
great capital to invest or manage." 

The cash, stocks, and real estate that you 
have on hand, are the least important part of 

111 



112 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

your capital. The assessor has no scheme 
for noting the items that are most valuable, 
and that go furthest toward building up a 
good business. I have already touched upon 
some of them, — probity, promptness, benevo- 
lence, and a careful choice of the line to 
which you mean to give your life. Let me 
be a little more definite. If you expect to 
make a fortune, you must choose a business 
that can grow. There are some lines of 
which even Napoleon Bonaparte could not 
make much, for there is in them no expan- 
siveness. If you find yourself in one of 
those little island cages, and believe it is the 
place you are meant for, go on and do your 
best, but do not expect to become a great 
land owner. The land is not there for any- 
body. You can keep your little island " trig 
and neat ; " you may be as contented with it 
as was Cincinnatus with his plow, or Xim- 
enes with his books, when he was running 
away from Isabella's attempt to make him 
Primate of Spain ; but you will have to let 



IN BUSINESS. 113 

Jie busy, outside world, manage the greater 
general interests. 

If your business has in it the possibility of 
growth, you must study the laws of that 
growth. Do not look for any fortunate ven- 
ture that shall give you a sudden tilt toward 
success. Understand that they only achieve 
permanent prosperity, who work by the im- 
mutable laws that underlie any development. 
Emerson says, " Hitch your wagon to a star," 
which means in plain English, find the forces 
that God has ordained, and set at work, and 
move in harmony with them. 

Get also a knowledge of all the details of 
your business. You must be willing to sit 
on the shoemaker's bench, and pound pegs, if 
you want to come out a safe and respectable 
shoe merchant. Learn the business from 
bottom to top. 

Two men begin trade in that line in equally 
favorable localities, with about the same cap- 
ital ; the stock of one as well selected as that 
of the other, and their clerks of about the 



114 FKOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

same grade of honesty and ability. One has 
worked his way up from the bench ; the other 
has little practical knowledge of that branch 
of trade. The former knows a piece of 
leather so thoroughly that no polish can hide 
its defects. He knows what goods will bear 
to be pushed, and which must be recom- 
mended with the rising inflection. The other 
has to depend upon the knowledge of others 
in keeping up his stock, and in urging it upon 
his customers. It takes no prophet to fore- 
tell the future of the two houses. One 
builds up a good trade. The other has one 
piece of bad luck after another, — which 
means that he blunders for lack of knowledge ; 
till he finds himself on the down grade, and 
bankruptcy is inevitable. 

Another item of your capital may be thor- 
oughness. One may know how to do a given 
thing, and yet be too careless, indolent, or 
divided in his attention, to use his knowledge. 
The successful dealer sees to it that every 
order that goes out of his house is filled so 



IN BUSINESS. 115 

as to please the customer, if possible. There 
must be no slackness, no carelessness, no 
leaving of loose ravelling ends. Every part 
of the work must be done conscientiously, 
and so as to stand wear. Your business must 
not only be managed with a complete know- 
ledge of its details, but with thoroughness in 
its execution. It will add to the permanency 
of your profits when it comes to be known 
that you are always truthful and reliable, 
your goods are always what they are repre 
sented to be. 

In the rush and hurry of a large town, 
there is a great tendency to be crowded into 
careless and indifferent habits. Workmen 
are apt to promise more work than it is 
possible for them to finish in a given time. 
In his anxiety to get on, and do as much as 
he can, each overrates his own ability. He 
meant to have the article done when he 
promised, but he was obliged to let one thing 
lap over the time of another, till some of his 
work was crowded into time quite beyond 



116 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

the limit of the customers' patience. So it 
has come to pass that promises are of but 
little value. They are not worth their face. 
Monday has come to mean about Wednesday, 
if not later. The article that was promised 
for Saturday will be sent around Tuesday 
noon. If your house was to be ready for 
occupancy by the first of May, you may be 
thankful if you are able to move in the first 
of June. There is no lack of excuses, to be 
sure. The carpenters failed to get out of 
the way of the plasterers, who, in turn, lapped 
over upon the contract of the paper-hangers ; 
and threw the painters out so far that they 
began another job that was urgent, and that 
could not be left after it had been begun. 
While you are living on promises in a board- 
ing house during the live-long month of 
May, your goods in boxes, your plans for the 
summer all thrown out of line, you can't help 
wishing that you had found an architect who 
could plan his business so thoroughly that all 
his pledges did not require thirty -days grace. 



IN BUSINESS. 117 

You could have afforded to pay an extra 
hundred dollars for such a marvel of relia- 
bility. 

Having learned one business thoroughly, do 
not throw all that knowledge into the waste 
basket, and begin upon another, unless you 
are sure the first effort was all a mistake, or 
the second offers extraordinary advantages. 
You remember the old adage about the 
rolling stone. The English member of the 
Rothschild banking house said to some young 
business men, " Make up your mind what 
you are going to do, and then stick to it, 
through thick and thin. If you are a banker, 
be that and nothing else. You cannot know 
thoroughly more than one thing." 

There is an atmosphere about every busi- 
ness, which can be mastered only by years of 
attention. It is as much more essential to 
success than the common details, as it is more 
difficult to acquire. 

Glass blowers will not attempt to teach 
any one their business, unless he has been in 



118 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

it from childhood. We were in the steel- 
rail mills one day, looking at the cauldrons 
of melted metal. The man in charge had 
told us that there was an exact moment 
when they must be taken from the fire. A 
little mistake in time, taking them off too 
soon, or leaving them on too long, would 
make them faulty. " How do you know that 
exact point " ? we asked. " Why, I know by 
the way it looks." " But how does it look 
when it is ready to come off? How does it 
differ from what it was the moment before, 
and from what it will be the moment after?" 
" I can't tell you. I only know that there 
is a difference that is plain enough to me ; 
but I have been years and years learning it." 
No other man about the establishment had 
that knowledge, that had come to be almost 
a sixth sense. It made him so necessary to 
the business, that he could demand any 
wages that were at all reasonable. It would 
have been foolish for him to go into some- 
thing else in which that special knowledge 



IN BUSINESS. 119 

would have been of no use, and would have 
had no value. 

Another element that can easily be brought 
into your business, and that will influence 
the result far more than you may imagine, is 
courteousness. 

Customers are not always the wisest and 
movit thoughtful people in the world. Indeed, 
to tell the truth, they are often so inconsider- 
ate and provoking as to make it difficult for 
one oO keep from giving them u a piece of his 
mind." Yet you will find that it pays always 
to be patient and polite; not only for its 
effect upon yourself, but for the prosperity 
of your business. If you allow yourself to 
be a little rough and short with those who 
you chink deserve to be plainly dealt with, 
you will surely make a mistake now and 
then, and be quite unjust in your harshness. 
There is a book-store where I was once 
treated rudely; and I would walk a mile 
rather than stop there again, and take the 
risk of a similar discourtesy. 



120 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

The safe and wise way is to be attentive 
to all, no matter how annoying they may be. 
Besides, the command, "Be courteous," is 
upon all Christians, a rule of conduct to 
which no exceptions are given. 

There is plenty of asperity and sourness 
in the world ; let us not add an iota to its 
aggregate. There are enough with bruised 
nerves, and hurt spirits, whom we may help 
with a kind word or even a smile. Let u? 
proffer that cup of cold water, in the name 
of our Master, no matter how provoking out 
customers may be. That man who tumbled 
your goods about in a nervous, inconsiderate 
way, finding fault with everything, especially 
the prices, did not confess to you that he was 
out nearly all night hunting for his reckless, 
drunken boy. If he had done so, you would 
have paid little attention to his rudeness. 
Give him the benefit of the doubt next time. 
Always be courteous. 

There is one difficult book that you must 



IN BUSINESS. 121 

study, if you would succeed. You have 
ample opportunity. Its leaves rustle at every 
breath* It is even within you ; yet so many 
are blinded by egotism, and occupied with 
their own petty affairs, that they never read 
aright one of its wonderful, vital pages. 
You must begin at once to study human 
nature. You must know people. The 
principles that govern human action are the 
same the world over. They are like the 
axioms of any science, of universal applica- 
tion. Mungo Park found motherly pity for 
the sorrows of the stranger precisely the 
same among African savages, that he had 
known in his own sweet English home. 
Find out the laws of mind, and work in 
harmony with them. None but God can 
suspend or annul natural law. He can re- 
make what He made ; but you had better not 
attempt it. You cannot master gravitation. 
It will out live or outpull you. And so also of 
the laws that govern mind. They are expres- 
sions of a Will that you cannot conquer. The 



122 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

wreck of many a poor fellow's life echoes with 
a hollow moan the dying cry of the apostate, 
" Thou hast conquered at last, O Galilean ! " 
As certainly as Christ must ultimately 
conquer, His laws are invincible. So you 
must make up your mind to work in harmony 
with them if you would succeed. If you 
dash yourself against them, determined to 
make a path through them at your own sweet 
will, you will certainly fail. 

Watch yourself when you are trying to 
bring to terms a particularly captious and 
unmanageable person. How carefully you 
observe every turn of his thought, and how 
skillfully you direct it to the points most 
advantageous for your case. You listen to 
his tiresome twaddle, as if it were quite 
Shaksperean. You laugh at his stale jokes 
in a manner altogether satisfactory. He tells 
you something that you know a great deal 
better than he, but you listen as though it 
were a marvellous bit of news. You are not 
playing the hyprocrite either. You are only 



IN BUSINESS. 123 

trying to please him that you may bring him 
to do something that you knew he ought to 
do. You need skill in managing difficult 
people in any department of effort. You 
can teach properly only by observing the 
laws of mind, and working in harmony with 
them. You may pour a wash of words over 
the minds of your pupils, so absorbed in your 
own enjoyment of what you are saying, that 
you do not seem to know or care whether or 
not they really take in one thought. Much 
pulpit teaching is done in the same bungling 
manner. You cannot lead a soul to the 
Lord unless you work by the laws that 
govern its action. Some good people who 
attempt to make bargains, impart truth, and 
help sinners to Christ, act as though they 
thought they could ride rough-shod over 
every preference or prejudice. What they 
have to say is so weighty, what they have to 
do ought so certainly to be done, they can 
but demand and receive attention. Not so ; 
if we do not find the thoroughfares by which 



124 FKOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

thought is carried into the mind, we waste 
our time trying to convey truth to other 
people. 

Others seeing the failure of those who are 
brusque, abrupt, and assuming, take the 
opposite extreme, and fawn, and smirk, and 
overdo the amiable. They try the Machia- 
velian policy ; and if they do not tell what 
is untrue, they go to the verge of fancy with 
their flatteries and sycophancy. It does not 
take long for people of sense to find them 
out, and mark them at their real value. 
Their rates of discount are fixed as certainly 
as is that of the paper of a house that is 
dropping into bankruptcy. They forfeit their 
chance of doing good as certainly as do those 
who have careless manners and indifferent 
skill. 

In studying human nature, it may be well 
to begin with the one most directly under 
your eye, — yourself. What attitude do you 
assume toward an abrupt, good man, who 
attempts to teach you something? Do you 



IN BUSINESS. 125 

see how, by a natural impulse of perverseness, 
you rise up and shut to the door, leaving 
him to batter outside ? What right has he 
to assume to dictate to you ? It may be a 
good thing that he is trying to crowd upon 
your attention, but you are not going to have 
it crowded upon you in that rude way. Re- 
member that, when you get in deadly earnest 
to make somebody do a given thing. You 
may defeat your bargain or your lesson as 
certainly by your over zeal in pushing your 
point, as by indolence or indifference. 

On the other hand, what effect does it have 
on you when one of those slippery, slimy, 
snaky people, come crawling around? Do 
you not draw your lips together and button 
up your pockets ? 

How do you enjoy a patronizing air in 
one who has no right to assume toward you 
the endearing relation of guardian? You 
may be sure that a similar course of conduct 
in you will affect others similarly. 

Humanity knows itself to be a king, 



126 PROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

though dethroned and crownless ; and it will 
be treated with respect. A lady who under- 
stood this, accidentally pushed a little street 
Arab off the sidewalk. She stopped and 
apologized, saying she hoped she had not 
hurt him. He stepped back, and gave his 
rimless hat a jerk. " My eyes, Jim ! " he 
exclaimed, turning to a boy who had heard 
the whole, " Ef she don't speak to me jest 
like I wore standin' collars ! A feller could 
'ford to git pushed off forty times a day, to 
git spoke to like that ! " 

You discover something similar in yourself, 
and you may set it down simply as a human 
trait, and make due allowance for it in your 
transactions with people. 

Study your nearest friends. We are apt to 
practice upon them in a manner to bring out 
human traits, as we dare not do with stran- 
gers. Discovering in them characteristics sim- 
ilar to our own, we may conclude that people 
outside our circle are made of the same stuff. 

A railway car is a good place to study 



IN BUSINESS. 127 

character. When people think they are 
where nobody knows them, they are apt to 
drop their masks, and show their real selves. 
H. H. said, " Perhaps the saints do go abroad 
sometimes, but I never saw one behind a rail- 
way locomotive." I have seen beautiful, 
saintly acts on the cars, but then, I have 
travelled a great deal. The rule is that peo 
pie under such circumstances resist every 
petty encroachment upon personal preroga- 
tive as doughtily as the little Greek states 
used to do, and some of them are in as per- 
petual a state of warfare. 

I remember a little Frenchman on a train 
between Florence and Rome, whose phiz and 
fussiness seemed to be of the rat-terrier order. 
We were in a " non fumare " car ; but in the 
next compartment, which was separated from 
our own by a partition that lacked a few 
inches of reaching the roof, somebody began to 
puff a cigar. Instantly our little Frenchman 
snuffed, and growled, and snapped his eyes 
in small fury, subsiding only after the guard 



128 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

had come and listened to his bristling com- 
plaint, and had duly enjoined the offending 
smoker to stop his violation of train etiquette. 
But it was not long till the tiny, blue shreds 
of smoke were curling over the top of the 
partition again, and touching the olfactories 
of the little Frenchman. Fizz ! Fuzz ! Bow- 
wow ! At it he went again, and that bit of 
history repeated itself till we reached the 
eternal city; though in all probability the 
irate Francois would not have objected to a 
good cigar himself. It was altogether a war 
for personal prerogative ; a not unusual one 
everywhere. 

A few months of teaching a country school 
will give you some good lessons in human 
nature, especially if you have to " board 
around." You will find the small men and 
women, under your care, manifesting all the 
traits that will bother and foil the bargain- 
makers and preachers, a score of years hence. 

I believe, after all, you can study this 
strange human book better upon your knees 



or business, 129 

than in any other way. You can learn most 
rapidly when you go directly to Him in whom 
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge, for He has promised if you lack 
wisdom, and ask of Him, to give liberally. 

The crowning element of business success, 
is faith in God. He that believeth need not 
make haste. One who has a clear, calm, 
steady faith in the Lord, is in condition to do 
his best. He knows that while he stays in 
God's hand, and uses his little strength to the 
utmost, he will be guided to the best out- 
come. 

" He always wins who sides with God, 
To him no chance is lost." 

His powers of body and mind will be kept 
in healthful equipoise, unworn by worry. 
After a hard days' work he can sleep as 
soundly as if nothing depended upon his 
efforts. 

Napoleon believed in his destiny. That 
was a counterfeit faith, that, for awhile, an- 
swered the purpose of a genuine trust in 



130 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

God. He could sleep in his saddle, in the 
midst of the din and danger of battle. No 
doubt those little naps did much toward 
keeping even his great tough brain in good 
working order 

Faith brings into the solution of every 
problem the power of Infinity. While Ne- 
hemiah was asking the Persian king to send 
his Hebrew captives back to their own coun- 
try, — an unheard-of boldness of petition, — 
he knew that the good hand of his God was 
on him, and his request was granted. 

You may set down your capital as so much 
muscular vigor, so much mental training, so 
much spiritual power, a business that can 
grow, knowledge of its details, thoroughness 
in their management, reliability, courteous- 
ness, knowledge of human nature, and faith 
in God: and it would seem that success is 
assured. You can say, "Jehovah is my 
strength. He will make my feet as hinds' 
feet. He will make me to walk upon mine 
high places." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OUT OF BUSINESS. 

No currents are more uncertain than those 
of the monetary world. None more certain- 
ly illustrate those lines of Robbie Burns 
about the "best-laid schemes of mice and 
men." Enterprises in which the wisest old 
heads would hardly have hesitated to guaran- 
tee a fortune, are left high and dry on the 
rocks to go to pieces, while some insignifi- 
cant scheme, in which nobody had faith, 
comes out grandly. 

You may have made one of the losing ven 
tures. Your ship may have struck the rocks. 
In plain Saxon, the business you were trying 
to build up, has failed, and now you must 
join the innumerable company of the unem- 

131 



132 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

ployed, and look about till you find some* 
thing else to do. 

Your position is not an enviable one, 
and I will be glad if I may make a sugges- 
tion or so that will help you find your way 
out. 

First oi all, nil desperandum. Your nerves 
have had a severe shock, your courage a des- 
perate wrench ; but while there is life there 
is hope. You are not the first one that has 
been tested by failure. Some who have been 
ultimately most successful have been through 
that ordeal again and again. So of all things, 
do not lose heart. Stagger to your feet, and 
thank God it is no worse. You need not 
look far from your own door to find multi- 
tudes who are in an infinitely sadder condi- 
tion than yourself. 

Beware of that drop of fatalism that 
blames the luck when things go wrong. Do 
not let it narcotize and paralyze further effort. 
There is no luck about it. Somebody blun- 
dered, and He* who chasteneth whom He 



OUT OF BUSINESS. 133 

loveth, and scourgeth every son whom He 
receiveth, permitted the blunder to spoil your 
fine plans, that He might save you from a 
worse evil than the one that has befallen 
you. 

Go right on, and ask no questions about 
the past. Of all the miserable gnats that 
sting and torment one who is under heavy 
weather, none are more annoying than those 
abominable " Whys." No matter why about 
anything just yet. Of all things, do not sit 
down, and try to think out the reason for 
this and that, going over every little painful 
detail of the affair, again and again, instead 
of gathering together the remnants of your 
affairs, and spreading your small tattered sails 
for another effort toward port. 

One thing is certain, that scheme is dead; 
and all your turning it over and over, and 
talking of "the particulars" with your 
friends, will not bring it to life. 

Another is quite as sure : there is good in 
the stroke, for " all things work together for 



134 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

good to them that love the Lord." It is dis- 
loyalty to God to talk about bad luck while 
He holds the helm. When you are strong 
and humble enough to heed Him, He will 
probably let you know what He meant b} r 
permitting this trouble to come upon you; 
but at present you had better set yourself to 
learn the lesson of humility, love, and faith, 
so that it will be safe for your soul to get out 
again into prosperity. 

You will be strongly tempted to depend 
upon your own vertebral column ; stiffening 
up with a stout, " I '11 show them that I 'm 
not a dunce ! They '11 see I '11 come out all 
right yet." That sort of behavior reminds 
me of a young man whom I saw when his 
physician was called to prescribe for him in a 
sudden prostration caused by overwork. 

" Well, doctor, how long are you going to 
keep me here ? " 

" Oh, I guess I '11 have you on your feet 
again in a couple of weeks." 

" Two weeks ! No, sir ! " and he straight- 



OUT OF BUSINESS. 135 

ened himself as if he were going to push the 
foot-board out of the bedstead. "I give 
you notice that I'll not stay here two 
weeks ! " 

" Very well, my friend," said the old doc- 
tor, w if that is your spirit, we '11 have to 
make it four. You '11 have to lie there till 
you get all that sort of thing out of you." 

While your courage stands like a rock, see 
to it that you let the Lord take all the ego- 
tism out of you. Your symptoms indicate 
self-trust ; and He will not tolerate that in 
one of His children. In its very incipiency 
it is harmful ; in its strength it is fatal. 

You will probably find that your changed 
circumstances will scatter your summer 
friends ; and you will be tempted to indulge 
in all manner of bitter misanthropies. The 
probability is that your friends have been 
about at faithful to you as vou would have 
been to them. We forget tnat we ourselves 
are human, when we get to railing against 
the infirmities of humanity. No doubt there 



136 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

are palliating facts in each case ; at any rate, 
the love that beareth all things, must give 
each the benefit of the doubt, for it also 
hopeth all things. You set about getting all 
the good you can out of this chastisement ; 
but, after all, there stands the ugly fact, — 
you are out of business, — now, what ? 

You will not think of sitting down idly to 
" wait for something to turn up." One thing 
is always sure to " turn up," — bills for your 
living. You must go to work at something 
right away; but you had better go quietly 
and carefully. You do not know which way 
to turn. Be sure God has not forgotten you 
for a moment. He will open a way for you. 
When the Israelites were at the Red Sea 
with their retreat cut off, they were told, 
"The Lord will fight for you;" their part 
was to "hold their peace." Yet the next 
moment Moses was ordered to speak to them 
that they go forward. You must set yourself 
bravely, thoughtfully, resolutely, to find the 
thing you are to do next. 



OUT OF BUSINESS. 137 

You will not think for a moment of falling 
back on your friends. As already intimated, 
you will find them scarcer than they were 
formerly. Ordinary friendships are not to be 
depended upon when most needed. You 
need not plan for full moonlight in " the 
dark " of that orb of steady habits ; neither 
can you order up moonlight when it is not 
promised in the almanac, no matter how in- 
convenient the darkness may be. Yon can- 
not count upon friends to help you when you 
most need them. To be sure the Lord has 
now and then a Great Heart who will stand 
by, no matter how heavy the gale. They are 
the ones of whom Shakespeare says : — 

11 The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.' ' 

You will find, as a rule, that each has all 
he can do to take care of his own affairs. 
Few have any time or strength to spare for 
pulling other people's loads uphill. 

While you are looking for a place to begin 



138 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

again, you want to take in sail to suit your 
altered circumstances. Do not try to " keep 
up appearances." You have probably debts 
enough to carry without adding another dol- 
lar. Better a thousand times come down at 
once to the simplest fare, reducing by so 
much the probabilities of your being misun- 
derstoood in the matter, and lightening by 
even a little, the burden of the uphill tug. 

It may be well to consider carefully whether 
or not you are adapted to the business in 
which you failed. Your judgment is more 
mature than when you chose it first; per- 
haps a change would be better; though in 
considering such an alternative, you must re- 
member that your knowledge of that busi- 
ness is a part of your capital, and it ought 
not to be lightly put aside. 

It will gall your pride to go down and be- 
gin again at the foot of the hill, doing work 
that you have been giving only to common 
day laborers; but your humility must be 
equal to that test. Sure of your own integ- 



OUT OF BUSINESS. 13$ 

rity, Christ in you the hope of glory, you 
cannot long be depressed by your troubles. 
You will find yourself saying, " I am as good 
in the eyes of the Lord, and His people, in 
my rough, working clothes, and at my coarse, 
hard labor, as I was when I rode about in my 
carriage, and couid entertain my friends 
handsomely." 

Do not shy anybody on account of your 
changed exterior. Give good people credit 
for common sense and Christianity enough to 
know that " a man's a man for a' that." 

Above all, trust God to teach you the les- 
son that your altered fortunes are intended 
to give. Get the honey out of the carcass of 
the lion. Let the sweet lesson in this body 
of bitterness give your soul strength ; and be 
sure that it will be one of the things for 
which you will thank God most fervently in 
later years. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MUSCLE. 

Mind has power over matter mysterious 
and measureless, yet matter sometimes gets 
the better of mind. There are people even 
in this enlightened nineteenth century, who 
believe so fully in the dominance of matter, 
that they look for depravity in the stomach 
or liver ; and they are ready to prescribe blue 
mass or podophyllin for feeble thinking, dis- 
turbed conscience, or disordered morals. 
They forget that some of the finest intellect- 
ual work of the world has been done by 
men and women with a slender physical life ; 
and some of the sweetest and mightiest 
saints live in the frailest tenements. Imper- 
fectly housed, or even disembodied, spirits, 
may play a part, now and then, in the affairs 
140 



MUSCLE. 141 

of the world; yet the rule holds that souls 
need good, sound bodies, for the tug and 
strain of bringing things to pass. Not un- 
frequently the last ounce of physical endur- 
ance takes the prize. One whose white soul 
touches the stars, may lie gasping and dying 
by the wayside, while another with feebler 
and more selfish spirit, but better muscle, 
holds out to touch the goal. 

The body is the soul's servant, and it must 
oe cared for accordingly. You take the best 
care of a horse if you would make him do 
the best work. When men risk thousands 
of money upon an animal's muscle, they 
spare no pains to keep him at his best. T am 
told that a certain New Yorker who invests 
heavily in the turf, keeps his racers in a 
stable with a groom sleeping beside them. 
The man has insufficient bedding, so that he 
will be wakened by a chill in the atmosphere. 
Then he will get up and give the horses extra 
blankets. If a man will keep his race-horse 
so carefully, how ought you to keep your 



142 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIYE. 

body in condition to render your soul the 
very best service ? 

The old Greeks carried muscular culture 
to the extreme. The highest honors of the 
state were given to the man who won in the 
games. When he returned to his city the 
walls near his house were taken down for 
him to enter ; as much as to say, " The city 
who has such sons for her defense, has no 
need of walls." 

Plato saw the folly of this, and swung to 
the opposite extreme, teaching that the body 
is the enemy of the soul ; and until the latter 
is set free from the burdensome, dominant 
clay, it cannot have so much as a thought. 

Christian ascetics have wrought by the rule 
of the old pagan philosopher, and have 
starved and otherwise maltreated their bodies, 
hoping thus to get rid of their sins. Paul 
said, " I keep my body under " ; — as the lit- 
tle boy rendered it, " my soul on top." Paul 
said, also, that our bodies are the temples of 
the Holy Ghost, therefore we must glorify 
God with them. 



MUSCLE. 143 

The body has rights and it can assert them. 
The nerve of a tooth is a small affair, but it 
can drive one out of his wits with pain. The 
sick headache is a simple indisposition. No- 
body wastes pity upon it, for it cannot kill 
you. Yet while it lasts you are deaf to all 
harmony, and blind to all beauty, knowing 
nothing in the universe but that tormenting 
pain and horrid nausea. 

Since the body has such power over the 
soul, it stands to reason that it is wise to keep 
it in good condition. This can ordinarily be 
done, if you study and obey hygienic law. 
Like all rules, this one has exceptions. One 
who is supposed to be authority was asked if 
all diseases could not be cured if taken in 
time. He replied, " Yes ; but to take them 
in time may mean to begin two hundred years 
back." 

You may have inherited diseases that no 
medicines can reach. You may have been 
hopelessly injured by an accident; yet the 
rule is that you may have health if you will 
take care of your body. 



144 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

To begin, you must have the main-spring 
of motive right in all your efforts at manag- 
ing this delicate and complex machinery. 
Seek to be in health, not that you may be 
saved the annoyance of suffering, and have 
the pleasure of feeling well and strong ; not 
even that you may be of service to your 
friends, your country, your race. Noble as 
this last motive is, it is poor and cheap beside 
the higher one of pleasing God, and doing 
something to add to His glory. For His sake 
to whom your body belongs, and that it may 
be strong for His service, you must do what 
you can to keep it in health, purity, and 
vigor. 

Its outward appearance is not a matter of 
indifference. It must be clothed with agree- 
able manners and proper deportment. You 
may see some great man who is so engrossed 
with matters of importance, as to quite for- 
get the " small, sweet courtesies." Do not 
allow yourself to imitate any of his uncouth 
ways, thinking thus to catch something of 



MUSCLE. 145 

his greatness. Diamonds may have flaws, 
but flaws do not make diamonds. The world 
may overlook the eccentricities of one whose 
hands are full of good work, because he is 
not supposed to have leisure for all the minu- 
tiae of decorum; but it is quite another 
thing with you, whose time is known to be 
far less valuable. You cannot be excused 
from giving due attention to the code of pro- 
prieties. He may wear an ill-fitting coat, but 
it will be better for you to have your clothing 
so made that it will give the impression that 
you still have leisure to attend to such mat- 
ters, and you have a desire to please by your 
personal appearance. Not that you are to be 
dandyish, your garments indicating what one 
of that insipid tribe was honest enough to 
admit. 

" I say, Fwed, youah necktie is just per- 
fectly splendid ! It 's magnificent ! " 

" It ought to look pretty well, I give my 
mind to it." 

Your great man may let his hair grow to 



146 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

an awkward length, brushing it only occa- 
sionally. He may neglect his nails, cutting 
and scraping them only when he is obliged 
to do so. It is to be hoped that you will not 
spend time trimming and polishing yours, on 
account of any silly fashion, yet you must 
not forget to keep your hands tidy, even to 
your fingers' ends. 

Many neglect their teeth, which is a costly 
carelessness. You may think you are too 
busy to stop and brush them daily. You 
3ave five minutes a day by your neglect, but 
presently you lose twenty-four hours with 
tooth-ache, — two hundred and eighty-eight 
times five minutes, of torture, and that multi- 
plied indefinitely, and ending with a wrench 
that threatens to unroof the brain, and a good 
dentist's bill in the bargain. 

Proper care of the skin, not only adds to 
the tidiness of one's appearance, but it is de- 
cidedly conducive to health. The skin helps 
largely at the scavenger work of the body, 
carrying off out-worn particles, and other 



MUSCLE. 147 

waste matter. This is of more importance 
than you may at first think. In a large city, 
where sanitary conditions are violated by the 
clogging of sewers, and the lack of proper 
street cleaning, people need not expect to be 
well. It is quite as necessary to keep open 
and clear the channels by which waste mat- 
ter is thrown out of the system. You cer- 
tainly do not want to breathe it into the faces 
of your friends; and yet that is just what 
you do when you neglect other methods of 
disposing of it. It is loaded upon the breath, 
and thrown out through the lungs. Even 
when an offensive breath proclaims publicly 
your negligence, that is not sufficient pen- 
ance. Enough of the poison remains behind 
to make you liable to serious diseases. Many 
a man lies for weeks, tossing with fever, los- 
ing any amount of time and money, and 
drifting down toward death, when a daily 
bath and vigorous use of the flesh-brush, 
would have kept his skin in condition for its 
work, and saved him the loss and suffering. 



148 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

We are often strangely at fault in regard 
to the circulation of the blood. We know 
that the blood goes out through the arteries, 
vitalizii^g every part of the body, and comes 
back, through the veins, to the lungs, to be 
re-vitalized by contact with outside air. The 
measure of our breathing, and the quality of 
the air we breathe, is usually the measure of 
our vitality and vigor. Yet, strange as it 
seems, we put ourselves on short allowance 
of air, which means, defective vitality, and 
failure in all good work, for lack of endu- 
rance and strength ; and that when we are 
talking on the bottom of a sea of it, at least 
fifty miles deep. We shut ourselves in tight 
boxes, and kindle fires in them, to burn out 
Hrhat may crowd in at the cracks, around the 
doors and windows. For our weekly wor- 
ihip, we build boxes large enough to hold four 
or five hundred of us, where we sit, breathing 
each others' breaths, and trying to be devo- 
tional. Our efforts are often a failure, for 
the lack of pure air, though it is presssng at 



MUSCLE. 149 

the rate of fifteen pounds to the square inch, 
upon the shell in which we shut ourselves. 
You may not be to blame for the wretch- 
ed ventilation of house, or lecture-hall, or 
church, but you can certainly cure yourself 
of the habit of only half-inflating your lungs 
in your ordinary breathing, thus only half 
vitalizing your blood, and keeping yourself 
feeble, when you ought to be full of vigor. 

It is a question whether you have yet 
learned to breathe at all as you ought. Most 
people lift the entire frame-work of the chest, 
shoulder-bones, arms and all, every time they 
fill the lungs. The result is that they do not 
fill the lungs completely, and much of the 
blood staggers back in a feeble way, to do the 
great work of supplying with vigor, muscle, 
nerve, and brain. Feeble circulation, feeble 
vitality, feeble thinking, feeble moral pur- 
pose ; — all feeble together, and for the lack 
of air, though the Lord has supplied it for us 
by the oceanful. Thoughtful people are just 
beginning to learn how to take in large, deep, 



150 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

breaths, using mainly, the muscles oi the dia- 
phragm, and the lower part of the chest. In 
a recent sangerfest, a lady who teaches in the 
public schools, gave an exercise in abdominal 
breathing, in which two or three thousand 
children participated. No one spoke or 
sung. The hour was given to exercises that 
develop the chest muscles, and fix a habit of 
deep, full breathing, making the muscles that 
are used in abdominal breathing, as firm and 
manageable as those of the hand, and training 
the will to use them as if they were the han- 
dles of a bellows. 

This system not only provides for abundant 
vitality, but it gives erectness and grace to 
the form. Curb your chin as you would bit 
a colt, to make him move with a sure, taut 
step. Let your heels strike the pavement, so 
as to stiffen the muscles back of your knees, 
and you will find yourself standing in an 
erect position. 

" Oh, but," you say, " I despise lofty airs. 
Anything in the world but these people who 



MUSCLE. 151 

go stepping around as if the earth were not 
quite good enough for them to walk on ! " I 
join you in that disgust ; and yet you want 
your bearing to represent honestly what you 
are, — an "upright, downright, straight-for- 
ward," self-respecting, God-fearing man, any- 
body's peer in the line the Lord has given 
you to walk in. 

A crawling, cringing, weak-kneed move- 
ment, like that of Dickens' Uriah Heep, will 
not make you " an 'umble person " ; neither 
will it make anybody believe that you are 
" 'umble." It will do one thing for you : it 
will set all the growlers, canine and human, 
snarling at your heels ; while if you have the 
bearing of a prince of the blood, " a child of 
the King," you can go through many a diffi- 
cult place unchallenged. An erect carriage, 
and steady, firm step, will help your mental 
operations. Your mind will be apt to be 
shambling, slouching, slovenly, in its move- 
ment, if your will has not the sense and grip 
to hold your muscles to direct, dignified ac- 



152 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

tion. And your soul, also, — easy-going, self- 
indulgent, shirking; — what Mrs. Stowe 
characterizes as " shiftlessness," will mark 
your spiritual life. On the other hand, grace 
will help strengthen your muscles. 

In one of the Salvation Army meetings 
in London, I heard a man speak who had evi- 
dently been rescued from that class of the 
lowest of all low people, — the English 
tramps and paupers. Some one has said, 
" No one has heart or hope for them but John 
Bright and Charles Spurgeon." He would 
have to add now, " and the Booths " ; for the 
meeting to which I refer was made up mainly 
of decently dressed, respectable-looking men 
and women, evidently gathered from the 
ranks of the outcasts; and that particular 
man had been fished out of the deepest mud 

of a London slum. 

I 

tt Do you know what religion does for a 
body ? " he asked. " 1 11 tell you. Before I 
was converted they called me ragged Jim ; 
and that 's just what I was, and no mistake. 



MUSCLE. 153 

Now what do you think was the first thing I 
did when the Lord spoke peace to my soul ? 
I borrowed a pin to fasten my old ragged 
coat together. I did n't know till that min- 
ute how shabby I was. Now, that 's what 
the grace of Jesus will do for a poor fellow. 
It '11 show him first, how ragged he is, and 
then it '11 put a decent coat on his back." 

There is nothing like the enlightening 
grace of God to make one feel his physical 
and mental, as well as spiritual, need. The 
prayer of the ritual — 

" Enable with perpetual light 
The dullness of our blinded sight,' y 

applies to the necessities of the whole com- 
plex being. So, if you have run rapidly over 
these pages, only half thinking of what I 
have been saying, passing the most of what 
you read over to some miserable consump- 
tive or dyspeptic of your acquaintance, who 
is " evidently in need of this fresh-air lec- 
ture," and have taken none of it to yourself, 



154 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

let me ask you to stop, right here, and ask 
Him, whose temple your body is, if you are 
doing all in your power, as He would have 
you, to keep it strong and beautiful for Him. 
No unclean bird would be allowed to make 
its nest in the forest of statuary that adorns 
the roof of the Milan Cathedral. The word 
in regard to the human body is, " Him that 
clefileth the temple will God destroy." The 
birds may fly oyer that wonderful roof, but 
they are not allowed to rest there. Impure 
thoughts may throw their loathsome shadow 
over your mind ; unclean words may be whis- 
pered in your ear ; but your will, loyal to the 
holy Christ, stands with its scourge of small 
cords, to drive them away. You have said to 
the Lord : — 

" Take my lips, and let them be 
Filled with messages for Thee." 

After that consecration you can never lower 
yourself to utter a syllable that will express 
or suggest a vile thought, no matter how 



muscle. 155 

free, or careless, or merry your mood. You 
can never forget that lips that are kept for 
the Master's use, must not be defiled by un- 
clean speech. 

I remember a little fairy story about two 
girls whose godmother gave each a gift ac- 
cording to her disposition. Whenever one 
spoke, gems fell from her lips, and the little 
children ran to gather them up. When the 
other opened her lips, reptiles slid from them, 
so that the children ran off in terror, to 
escape the horrid things. You do not want 
to drop poison from your lips, that will burn 
and blister long after the good you tried to 
say is forgotten. 

Keep your ear-gate closed against what 
ought not to be said. It will take but a mo- 
ment for a drop of the venom of hell to get 
into your thoughts, and it may take years to 
restore you perfectly from its pollution. You 
would not stay in the presence of a leper, for 
fear of contracting the terrible disease. 
Would you trust yourself to associate with 



156 FROM FIFTEEN TO' TWENTY-FIVE. 

one who is leprous in soul? The latter is in 
finitely the greater danger. Shun such a 
young man, as you would one from a pest- 
house, dripping with contagion. In the care 
of the body, as in everything else, it is the 
blessing of the Lord that maketh rich, and 
addeth no sorrow. It is the Sun of Right- 
eousness that has healing in His wings. 
When you learn to rejoice evermore, pray 
without ceasing, in everything give thanks, — 
"for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus 
concerning you," — you will find that you 
can " mount up on wings as eagles, you can 
run, and not be weary, walk, and not faint." 
Christianity has added fifteen years to the 
average life of the race. When its privileges 
are fully understood and enjoyed, it will 
bring us, in spirit, at least, into possession of 
perennial youth. 

You need never fret; for all things work 
together for good to them that love the Lord. 
You need have no care ; for you may cast all 
your care on Him. God is able to take the 



MUSCLE. 157 

very best care of whatever is committed to 
Him. You may feel free to ask Him to do 
all that needs to be done to keep your body 
in good working condition, as long as you can 
say, " For Thy glory, because it belongs to 
Thee." 



CHAPTER X, 

IK THE COUNTKY. 

It is not difficult to see a difference be- 
tween those who live in the city and those 
whose home is in the country, though that 
difference is mainly external and superficial, 
It is not in dress, for that is a matter of per- 
sonal taste. Some have a certain style aboui- 
them, as we say; and they will look well- 
dressed in the coarsest, plainest clothing, 
while others pay extravagant tailors' bills, 
and yet fail altogether of the elegant appear- 
ance they so much desire. One who has 
natural taste will make a pretty bouquet of 
dandelions and a mullein stalk ; another who 
is deficient in that quality, may have all the 
flowers of a conservatory, and he will put 
them together with an awkward, constrained 
168 



IN THE COUNTRY. 159 

air, minus the grace that is as natural to the 
other, as song is to the nightingale. 

As a rule, however, city people are more 
stylishly dressed than those who live in the 
country. They see well-dressed people every 
day, because many of them are showy and 
extravagant ; besides, country people gener- 
ally wear their best when they go to the city. 
So city people get a " habit of good clothes," 
as it is sometimes called. This holds also of 
their manners, which are a secondary cloth- 
ing. They of the city have no time for rude- 
ness. Jostled and crowded as they are con- 
stantly by strangers, they find that they pass 
for more and get on better if they are polite. 
In the country, everj^body knows everybody, 
and there is little temptation to attempt to pass 
one's self off for more than he is. One may 
be a little rough and careless in his exterior, 
but they all know his real worth, and they 
say, "It's his way, you know"; and it makes 
little difference with his standing. 

In the city, nobody knows you, and they 



160 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

take you, up to certain risks, according to 
your appearance. That, of itself, will give 
one a habit of " putting the best foot for- 
ward." 

A prime difference between the people 
who live in the country and those who are in 
the city, lies in their use of time. In the 
country the chief values depend upon growth, 
and growth takes time, and time is the most 
plentiful commodity. 

A farmer becomes rich, not so much from 
personal work, as from the increase of popula- 
tion around him, and the development of the 
resources of the land. His slow enrichment 
goes right on, whether he sleeps or wakes. It 
may fluctuate with atmospheric and general 
financial changes ; but the rule is, steady in- 
crease. He may drive early and late, crowd 
in larger crops, and take advantage of the 
market, but the main factor in his problem of 
success is time. 

When any product is abundant it is used 
carelessly. Near the oyster beds of Chesa- 



IN THE COT73STTBY. 161 

peake Bay, they use the very best " counts " 
as commonly as people elsewhere do eggs. 

Time, the best country product, is used 
wastefully. That habit may give a young 
man a leisurely, hesitating, sometime slouch- 
ing gait. City people live by trade. Every- 
body has something to sell ; and the profits 
of the business are usually determined by the 
number of times one can turn his capital in 
a year. That makes him alert, exact, direct. 
It gives him a not-a-moment-to-waste air. 

Ask one in the country to direct you to a 
given point, and he tells you to go on till you 
come to a red barn. Widow Beasley lives 
there. Turn down past her house, and on, 
till you come to the bridge over the run ; 
you mustn't take the road that bears off to 
your left hand, up the branch. It will bring 
you out at old Squire Putnam's, a good four 
miles from where you want to go, etc., etc., 
etc. I remember asking a London policeman 
the way to the submarine telegraph office. 
" Top of the third turning " ; and before 1 



162 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE, 

could make up my mind whether or not he 
had answered me in my mother tongue, and 
what the " top of a turning " could be, he 
was in the middle of the street, helping a 
cripple out of a crush of hansoms and omni- 
buses. 

There are many advantages in country life, 
that one ought to make the most of while he 
has the chance. Fresh air, sunshine, rough 
riding, make the best possible muscle. More 
than one battle in later life turns on the 
ability to endure muscular strain and wear. 
Farmer boys usually get a magnificent phys- 
ical outfit without boating or base-ball, which 
are expensive of time and opportunity, and 
often of morals. This muscle stands them 
in good stead upon occasion, and it is always 
serviceable. Do you remember the story of 
the countryman from the south of France, 
who was raised from the ranks to the em- 
peror's staff within five minutes, by his muscle 
and wit ? During a review in Paris, Napo- 
leon's horse had become unmanageable, via 



IN THE COUNTKY. 163 

the emperor was in imminent danger. No- 
body dared attempt a rescue, till the vicious 
animal had plunged down the ranks to where 
this countryman was standing. The man 
had handled more than one dangerous horse 
before, and he knew the strength of his own 
muscle. He seized the bit with both hands, 
and brought the frantic beast to a stand-still. 
" Thanks, captain," said the autocrat. The 
man showed instantly that quickness of 
thought that comes from sudden encounters 
with the forces of nature, and the stealthy, 
dangerous creatures of the forest In a flash 
he responded, " Of what regiment, Sire ? " 
The emperor recognized the shrewdness and 
quickness, that with the marvelous strength, 
would make the man invaluable in his ser- 
vice, and replied at once, " On my staff." 
The countryman's fortune was made, as this 
world goes. 

City people can do a few things well and 
gracefully ; but the country gives more time 
for broad general thinking, a seeking of pri- 



164 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

mal principles, and unflinching loyalty to 
truth. The long, still days, with the broad 
sweep of wood and field, the calm meadow 
slopes, the great, old hills, and the deep, pure 
azure sky arched over all, must bring wide, 
quiet thought, to the soul. 

On the other hand, it is easy where there is 
so little stir, so few excitements, to let the 
weeks and months slip by unimproved, and 
to come to the last, carrying the burden of 
wasted opportunities, undeveloped, crippled 
faculties, and unwrought good. Think of 
the long winter evenings that are dozed or 
dawdled away, the stormy days when you 
are shut in from work, and you ride over to 
the store or shop, and sit around, whittling a 
pine stick, and telling, or listening to stories, 
— some of them not the most elevating. 
How many books might have been read, 
and pondered, — how many studies master- 
ed, if you had set yourself resolutely to 
use every moment, and fill it with the 
work of satisfying your hunger to know. 



IN THE COUNTRY. 165 

Farmer boys are apt to put off the time of the 
commencement of their study till they get 
out of the grind of work, and have more 
congenial, bookish surroundings. 

That will never do ; for you are not at all 
sure that such a time will come, " this side 
Heaven." The thing to do is to begin at 
once a course of reading. It is also well 
always to have a study on hand, a language 
or a science, to be learned, little by little, 
but all the more prized, when once acquired. 

Thank the Lord for the fine muscle He has 
given you; and train it to hold you erect and 
graceful in your bearing, as certainly as your 
bit does the colt you intend to sell in the 
city. Your neighbors may give you a sar- 
castic fling now and then ; but never mind. 
You can let them see by your gentle thought- 
fulness and patience, that as kind and meek 
a heart beats in your big chest as ever 
throbbed for another man's trouble; and it 
will come to pass after a while that when 
their eyes rest on you they will involuntarily 



166 FKOM FIFTEEN TO TWEHTY-FITE. 

straighten up, and throw back their own 
shoulders ; and the next thing you know 
some of the boys, who had been " getting a 
little wild," will come to you for advice 
about books. It always make me wonder to 
see a farmer riding to market on a board 
across the top of his wagon box, and his back 
bent like a rainbow, when it would be so easy 
to have a seat with a back to it, and sit up 
straight, instead of violating hygienic law in 
that careless fashion. 

There has been no end of jokes about 
" book-farming," but it is coming to be seen 
that thought is as good on a farm as any- 
where else. If farmers were mere animals, 
and wrought by instinct, like bees and 
beavers, making the first cell or house as 
perfect as the fiftieth, there would be no use 
in trying to teach them anything. The utter 
inefficiency of those who fail at other things, 
and go into the country, thinking that " any- 
body can manage a farm," illustrates the 
need of practical training in this, as in other 



m THE COUNTRY. 167 

avocations. It is possible that they who 
know the most about the subject in hand, 
are not the ones who write the books, and 
edit the papers, yet the fact holds that think- 
ing and study will pay on a farm, as certainly 
as anywhere ; and it had better be done by 
educated young farmers, rather than left to 
cheap writers in back attics who have not so 
much as two square yards of sky in sight, to 
say nothing of a patch of ground where any- 
thing could grow. 

So I say, if you expect to spend your days 
on a farm, make your place a model of thrift 
and neatness for all that country. Have 
your barns carefully and economically built, 
your house as tasteful and commodious as 
your purse will permit. Have books, music, 
pictures, and above all, sweet, pure charity 
and friendliness. 

Make up your mind to have as much labor- 
saving machinery in doors as out. I have 
seen men riding about on their " cultivators," 
enjoying all the modern improvements, while 



168 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

their wives were breaking their backs over 
the washboard, and wringing their clothes by 
hand, just as their great-grandmothers did. 
I have thought I would like to reverse the 
order a little while, set the " weaker vessel " 
riding about, and let the "sterner stuff" 
take a few rounds at the unhelped, hand- 
to-hand fight with dirt. I think the house 
would soon be stocked with washing- 
machines and wringers, patent churns and 
sweepers, and all other needed apparatus for 
the economy of muscle. 

Be sure and plan to save your minutes, so 
as to make the most of them for your books. 
Have refined and elevating table talk. 
Discuss needed reforms, church benevolences, 
the interests of the Lord's kingdom, rather 
than the flavor of a pie, or the toothsomeness 
of a dumpling. I know of nothing under 
the broad, blessed skies, lovelier or more rest- 
ful than an intellectual, Christian home in 
the country. You can make such a one, if 
it please God to give you the true help-meet, — 



IN THE COUNTRY. 169 

and you must ask Him for her, — but you 
will have to be very wise in the use of your 
time and money. It is as easy to overwork 
the body, and starve the soul, for the sake of 
adding to one's possessions, in the country, as 
it is in the city. In such homes, the old go 
down gently under the weight of years, and 
the young come up sweet and true, sound in 
health and morals, ready for the bravest and 
best work. From such homes, not only 
u Auld Scotia's grandeur springs," but also 
that of every enlightened Christian land. 

There seems to be a gregarious impulse on 
Americans to draw them into the cities. At 
the beginning of the century only one twenty- 
fifth of them were in large towns, now there 
is one-fifth of them there. It will not be 
strange, if you yield to the currents, and are 
carried thither also. That will be a far more 
exhausting life than the one you now live. 
So you must improve these days in laying 
by you in store a fund of strength for those 
trying years. You will find in the city 



170 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

that they who put their brawny shoulders 
under the world's burdens, lifting towards 
the light, are country born and country bred. 

Moses lived his first forty years in a palace ; 
but the next forty had to be spent in the 
back side of the desert, to bring him to the 
clear, strong insight that would enable him 
to see and do the Divine will. Luther, 
Washington, Lincoln, those broad, brave, 
vital men, all spent their early years in the 
country. 

But of all, we love most to think of the 
Young Man of Nazareth, walking alone 
under that Syrian sky, going to the hill on 
the side of which the little village was set, 
and looking off toward the Mediterranean, 
kneeling all night with the wind tossing His 
dew-dampened hair, His head bowed under 
our burdens, or His forehead raised toward 
His own stars, and His heavenly throne, in 
pleadings for us. Keep ever before you that 
lone, deep-eyed, sorrowful young man, who 
lived his secluded country life, and then wrs 



IK THE COUNTRY. 171 

manifested and offered for our sins. He 
said, " I am with you alway, even to the end 
of the world." Let Him walk by your side, 
and talk with you as you journey by the 
way. Unconsciously to yourself you will 
grow like Him in character, and some day 
you will be recognized as His brother and 
friend, and honored by good people, by the 
angels, and God. 



CHAPTER XI. 

IN THE CITY, 

City people have advantages of which it 
may be well for us to take an inventory ; 
though this has already been suggested in 
what I have said to young men in the 
country. 

You are so constantly among people, it 
has become second nature for you to be well- 
dressed, polite, erect and self-possessed. 

You have also learned directness of address, 
and a corresponding directness of mental 
action. Your answer to a question is as 
straight and economical as a telegraph dis- 
patch. 

To a given extent, you are thoroughly ait 
fait in the ways of the world. You have 
been jostled by thousands, and sometimes 

m 



D* THE CITY. 173 

not by any means agreeably, so that yon 
have seen as many phases of this myriad- 
minded microcosm, this queer, cranky, mys- 
terious human nature, as you would have 
done if you had lived in the country a hun- 
dred years. 

You have already seen quite as much 
wickedness as it is profitable for a young 
man to know about. You have acquired a 
habit of demanding proof, and you are not 
in the least offended when strangers require 
you to prove your identity. You have seen 
so many frauds that you suspect everybody 
till he proves himself genuine. When a 
stranger asks a favor of you, you require him 
to show his credentials in as business-like a 
way as a conductor asks to see a passen- 
ger's ticket. This is a part of the edu- 
cation that the world gives, and you who 
live in the city graduate early in that de 
partment. 

Within given lines your powers of observa- 
tion are well developed. When you go to 



174 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

the country for your summer vacation, you 
see a thousand things that pass unnoticed 
under the very eyes of your country friends ; 
though candor compels me to acknowledge 
that you may be behind them in solidity of 
opinion, and breadth of outlook. 

You are tired of the monotony of the piles 
of brick and mortar within which you trudge 
your treadmill round, day after day, and the 
freshness and freedom of the country charm 
you. Your eyes take in hungrily the filmy 
clouds of tender green that catch in the 
branches of the trees in early spring ; the 
vista of forest avenues, the autumnal glory 
when the woods blaze forth in scarlet and 
gold. After your being shut up so long 
to glimpses of the azure between rows of 
buildings, a whole June sky is superb, an 
unveiled sunset is magnificent. Some of the 
finest bits of rural description have been 
written by the dwellers in cities who go 
into the country with fresh, prying eyes. 

You have your five senses under good drill ; 



IN THE CITY. 175 

and just there lies one of your greatest dis- 
advantages. You grow superficial in your 
judgment, you have a consequently feeble 
hold of affairs. That may account for the 
fact that very few people who manage the 
world's great interests, are born and brought 
up in the city. Country people permit days 
to slip by with little systematic effort at men- 
tal culture. City people live a condensed 
life ; yet they squander time on an infinity of 
affairs that have to be handled in a hasty 
manner. This superficial work quite spoils 
one for the calm, slow, steady, deep thought 
that only can strike the core of things. City 
people have usually three-ply engagements 
for every evening. They try to choose be- 
tween a half dozen things that they would 
like to do, and it usually ends in their dip- 
ping into each, and doing none thoroughly, 
till they lose the habit of doing anything as 
it ought to be done. You start up from the 
dinner-table, and rush to a committee meet- 
ing, to help make a quorum, and get busiDess 



176 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

under way. Then you slip out and drop in 
upon a lecture that you ought to have heard 
from beginning to end. You glance over at 
the reporters' table and say to yourself, "I'll 
get the substance of it in the morning paper, 
so I '11 just run over and show myself at 
Smith's reception." While you are tossing 
on your pillow at midnight, trying to get the 
better of the strong coffee you were foolish 
enough to imbibe, you congratulate yourself 
that after all, you have done a good even- 
ing's work. Better go down in sackcloth 
and ashes, for attempting the ubiquitous, and 
fastening upon yourself the habit of doing 
everything in a hasty, shallow way, that will 
leave you altogether hors du combat when 
the time comes for strong, telling strokes. 
When the people are looking for a man to 
give the heavy, steady pull at the oar, that 
will bring the boat through the surf, they 
will see that you are of too light a weight. 

You are mortgaging your future ; and na- 
ture is a hard creditor; she always exacts 



IN THE CITY. 177 

compound interest. You are exhausting 
your capital ; and when the hour strikes for 
the grand opportunities of life, you will be 
found unequal to the strain ; and the prize 
will be taken by some plain, hard-working 
man from the country, who has been think- 
ing, thinking, thinking, as Grant and Lincoln 
used to do. 

I hope you will begin at once to remedy 
this mischief. Plan to do less, and do it bet- 
ter. Give yourself a mental sub-soiling. 
You have turned over the surface stratum of 
thought till it is quite worn out. Fields have 
to be left fallow to gather strength. There 
has to be a change of crops, to give one ele- 
ment a chance to come up while another is 
being exhausted. The soil must be fed and 
enriched. How much good, solid, mental 
food have you taken in, digested, and assimi- 
lated, during the past year ? 

Of the old statesmen who are playing the 
game on the great European chess-board, 
they only are full of vigor, and able to keep 



178 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE, 

pace with the surge of events, who hold their 
minds fresh and strong, by rest, and change, 
and study. 

But you say you are just beginning life ; 
you have not come to the pressure of which 
I have been speaking. True ; yet you are on 
the train, headed in that direction. Even 
the little children in the city, unless they are 
carefully guarded, have an old, out-worn look. 
Did you ever notice the faces of the street 
Arabs that steal street-car rides ? Eight and 
ten years old, and yet they seem to have 
been beaten upon by the storms of half a 
century. While I am writing, a quartette of 
city young folks sit across the aisle from me, 
in a railway car. Two young men and two 
young ladies ; they have turned a seat, and 
the couples sit facing each another. Fair, 
average, young people ; from their talk it is 
evident that they all belong to the same Sun- 
day-school class. They are blase, nervous, ex- 
citable, superficial. Now they begin to blow, 
back and forth, the chaff of small talk, and 



IN THE CITY. 179 

so far, I discover not the first grain of wheat 
in the whole of it. Indeed, the most of it 
hardly rises to the dignity of language. It 
is mainly adjectives, interjections, slang, and 
light laughing. The girls are a little guarded 
on the slang part of the talk ; yet they evi- 
dently enjoy it, and they encourage the boys 
by laughing at their queer speeches. There 
is something in the whole performance that 
reminds me of what Solomon says about 
the crackling of thorns under a pot. 

Now is the time for you to fix your habits 
so that you can stand steady in the currents 
that bear the majority of city young men 
into that careless, foolish, superficial life. 

Make up your mind now, that you will not 
live in that hap-hazard, drifting way. Where 
there is so much to claim your attention, you 
will choose the best, and learn to shut off the 
rest with a resolute " No." Avoid dipping 
into this and that, just to say that you were 
there ; you saw this celebrity, you heard that 
lion roar. Unless you learn his secret of sue- 



180 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE, 

cess, what is the use of giving him one of 
your precious hours ? Of one thing you may 
be certain : he did not become famous 
through the dissipating round of city sociality. 
It takes time to make a character, as well as 
an oak ; and city people are bankrupt in that 
priceless commodity. They never have time 
for anything. 

I would not advise you to attempt yet, to 
do as one who has been a crowned king of 
men for nearly half a century, would say, 
44 Put into the fire all the irons that you can 
get hold of, shovel, tongs, poker and all." I 
would say, rather, try to do only what you can 
do to advantage. When you find you can 
manage safely and surely the interests in 
hand, and you have a little surplus energy, 
then thrust another iron into the fire, but not 
till then. At the beginning make rigid rules 
for your amusements, your social life, even 
your work. Economize your resources. 
While you allow yourself to be crowded to 
your full strength, keep enough reserve pow- 



IN THE CITY. 181 

er to enable you to meet any emergency that 
may arise. Above all things, cultivate a habit 
of excellence. Build your character like 
that marvellous roof of Milan cathedral, — 
away up there out of sight of the crowds 
that surge along the pavements below, " for 
the eyes of the angels," as they say : " For 
the gods see everywhere." 

I saw it illuminated one night, by chemi- 
cals that brought out, now in one brilliant 
color, then in another, every spire and statue. 
It was like a dream of Paradise, — lying 
there under that Italian sky, it is seen only 
by the tourists who are at the pains of climb- 
ing stairs to look at it, except upon occasions 
when its marvellous beauty is illuminated 
for the crowd. It made me think of the 
character of Lincoln, our great emancipator. 
We passed him on the street, and jostled him 
in the political thoroughfares, little dreaming 
of the calm, high soul that was there, under 
God's pure heavens, till the lurid lights of the 
nation's peril brought out, through the gloom, 



182 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

its majestic proportions, its perfect harmony, 
its exquisite finish. Build your character so 
that it will bear a calcium light. 

Everybody knows that a great city is full 
of dangers to young men who come in from 
the country. You can hardly be too cautious 
where you know there are many gins and pit- 
falls. 

When we were in Mammoth Cave, Mat, our 
old guide, would call out, now and then, 
" Keerful ! Pit on de right ! " If we stray- 
ed ever so little from the path in those slip- 
pery places, we might fall, nobody could tell 
how many feet — 

" Deep among disjointed stones.' ' 

The true path was hardly discernible by com- 
mon eyes. Though thousands had trodden it, 
their footfall left no track. I found, how- 
ever, that when I kept near old Mat, I saved 
many steps, and my way was safer and surer. 

You know of some of the pits beside thi3 
path ; and I need hardly remind you of them. 



IN THE CITY. 183 

You have been warned against confidence 
men and kindred decoys who would lure you 
into houses of death. You have heard of 
those who live by the vices of others, and 
who gloat on the dying agonies of the inno- 
cent who fall into their traps. Yet you can- 
not be too watchful, for nothing can exceed 
the ingenuity with which they devise new 
methods to catch the thoughtless. 

Where so many have lost their way and 
their life, your only safety is to keep near 
your Guide, setting your feet in His very 
footsteps. 

In the quiet, steady habits of your coun- 
try life, you have laid up a store of health 
and vigor ; now you will be tempted to squan- 
der it in late hours, and the many excite- 
ments that lie in wait for you. 

You will also be in danger of mental star- 
vation. People who write and print cheap, 
wishy-washy literature, are specially active in 
crowding it upon the attention. It seems, 
sometimes, that the facility with which it is 



184 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

" pushed " is in exact ratio with its light- 
ness. 

The daily papers carry to perfection the art 
of selling " sensations." From the competition 
that is rife among them, they get the trick of 
saying things in a style as sharp as the crack 
of a minie-rifle, chiming exactly with the 
stir and dash of young blood. You can see 
how it will help you get rid of your country 
moderateness ; but you must set a " thus far " 
to this spirited daily editor, or he will spoil 
your appetite for solid food. He will also 
teach you to forget, for he is a great gossip 
who tells to-day what he may have to contra- 
dict to-morrow; and he expects you to un- 
load your memory each twenty-four hours, so 
as to be ready for a new budget. 

The English talk about " walking up an 
appetite." Your best chance to keep your 
mental appetite good, is to take a " consti- 
tutional " in the shape of at least a few min- 
utes good hard study of a language or a sci- 
ence daily. That, with your Bible study, 
will keep you from learning to forget. 



IN THB CITY. 185 

You can tell when you begin to decline in 
physical strength ; but mind shows its pallor 
and attenuation only to close observers. 
Others will feel your mental emaciation long 
before you are conscious of it yourself. 
Your only safety is to establish your prin- 
ciples of mental hygiene, and live by them 
loyally. 

Your greatest danger will come from the 
breaking up of your home religious habits. 
In your old home church, if you were 
tempted to neglect the regular services, you 
knew you would be missed, and your absence 
would be inquired into and commented upon. 
In the city, as soon as you turn the first cor- 
ner, on a Sunday morning, you are as cer- 
tainly lost to observation, as if you were in 
the wilderness. Nobody knows how you 
spend your Sabbath. The braces are gone. 
You are left to your own responsibility. 
When you are thus cut loose from your moor- 
ings, you are apt to drift with wind and tide 
till you lose your reckoning. 



186 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIYF2. 

u Oh, what's the use of being so narrow 
and bigoted ! One church is just as good as 
another. It broadens a man's horizon to 
hear all sides of a question. You've always 
been tied up to one church ; now look around 
awhile ; they are all alike to you here." If 
you take that advice, they will soon be all 
alike to you, sure enough ; for you will care 
for none of them. Another set of influences 
more pungent and sensational will take you 
captive. 

They say that in India a diseased liver is in- 
dicated by an increased appetite for sharp 
condiments in the curry. The poorer the di- 
gestion the more pepper and mustard. There 
is something like this in morals. When we 
are near God we relish plain, simple, substan- 
stantial food ; but when we get spiritual dys- 
pepsia and torpidity, we must have a highly 
flavored, sensational style of preaching and 
teaching. Thousands have fallen into this 
snare, and you are no stronger than they. 

I never knew a young man come to the 



IN THE CITY. 187 

city, and drift about hither and thither, in- 
stead of selecting a steady place of worship, 
who did not fall into a habit of spending his 
Sabbath afternoons calling upon young ladies, 
and talking all manner of nonsense. The 
bier garten and Sunday theatre are a not un- 
usual ending of such a course of careless 
living. 

The position you take in regard to the 
church will do much toward determining 
your social standing. 

While society in the city seems free and 
unfenced, it is, after all, a conglomerate of 
little communities, each of which is clearly 
defined in its limitations. Ordinarily, when 
one is admitted to a guild he is entitled to all 
its rights and privileges. When he takes a 
decided stand for religion by connecting him- 
self with a church, the other members recog- 
nize their obligation to look after him so- 
cially. The exclusive few may be remiss in 
their duties, but the more earnest and effi- 
cient look after strangers in the oongrega- 



188 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

tion, especially young men, who are more 
easily entrapped by Satan, and are conse- 
quently rarer in church circles. 

If you go to the church sociable, you will 
find some sweet-faced " old maid," or genial 
matron, coming to introduce herself with an 
air of cordial interest, and taking special 
pains to make you feel acquainted and at 
home. You must appreciate her kindness, 
and make the most of it ; for she has left her 
pretty home, her books and magazines, that 
have lain on the table for weeks, waiting for 
the leisure hour that never comes, besides a 
choice coterie of delightful friends, for this 
noisy, clattering crowd, that she may make 
just such strangers as you are pass an agree- 
able evening, and learn to look toward the 
church as their social as well as religious 
home. If she asks you to call, do not hesi- 
tate to accept the invitation. She is sincere ; 
for she knows your danger a thousand times 
better than you do yourself; and for her 
Master's sake she wants to help you to a safe 



IN THE CITY. 189 

standing place in the whirl in which you find 
yourself. 

Select your church. Present your letter. 
Go to your class and prayer meetings, even if 
they do not seem exactly like those of the 
dear old home church. You will get used to 
the new ways in a little while, and feel quite 
at home in them ; for you will find the Lord's 
children are the same at heart the world 
over. 

Do not shy any one ; but make up your 
mind to accept and return courtesies, and to 
do your part toward making others, who 
come in later than you, feel happy in their 
new associations. You will find yourself 
helped more by the little effort you put forth 
for others, than in any other means of grace. 
And you will also find, if you take the right 
course, that these new surroundings help you 
far more than the old ones did. But, above 
all, you must be careful of your private re- 
ligious habits. You must spend some time, 
daily, in the study of the Bible, and have at 



190 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

least three seasons of private prayer each 
day. 

Spurgeon said that when he went away to 
school, and the older boys tormented him, he 
found in Christ a friend who was never too 
busy to listen to him ; one who never made 
fun of him, and never told. 

As careful hygienic habits as are necessary 
to keep the body in health, will keep the 
mind and soul safe and sound. The greater 
the temptation, resisted in God's strength, 
the more rapid the growth. 



CHAPTER XII 

UNDER DISCIPLINE. 

If you were enrolled as a student in a 
dterary institution, and no difficult lessons 
were given you, no exercises prescribed, that 
were meant to correct bad mental habits, you 
would say, " I do n't see what good all this 
is going to do me. I came here to learn. 
These people try hard enough to make me 
have a pleasant time, but they are not teach- 
ing me anything." 

If lessons were given you, so difficult that 
your brain reeled under the tug, you would 
say, " I need them : and the harder they are, 
the sooner I will be through, and ready for 
the actual work of life." 

In Christ's school we have everything to 
learn, and yet we wonder, sometimes, at the 

191 



192 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

severity of the lessons. We dread the disci- 
pline, though we know that our seasons of 
prosperity are our times of greatest danger. 
In the old story, the wind and storm strove 
in vain to steal the traveller's cloak. The 
more they raved, the more closely he drew it 
about him ; but the sunshine made him loosen 
its fastenings, and let it slip from his shoul- 
ders. 

When all is bright, we become so occupied 
with the Lord's gifts that we forget the Giv- 
er. We sin against Him in our ingratitude, 
and are betrayed into that most hidden and 
baneful sin, self-trust. 

The Lord told Saul, when he was little in 
his own sight he was made ruler over the 
trbes of Israel. We feel our weakness, and 
Jean on God for help. He does the work, 
and lets us stand by and see the result. We 
rejoice in the success. Friends flatter us, and 
we forget that God did it all, — we, nothing. 
We begin to trust our own strength, and just 
in proportion as we do that, we cripple our 



TJNDEB DISCIPLINE. 193 

selves, and lose our chance to be workers 
together with God. 

We attribute our unsuccess to this and 
that, blaming circumstances, opportunities, 
our friends and co-workers, anybody, any- 
thing, except our own perverse self-trust, 
Our fault is like an obscure disease that the 
physician tracks with difficulty. It hides it- 
self under a drawl or whine of self-depreci- 
ation, and tries to pass itself off for hu- 
mility. "Oh, "I'm so unworthy, — such a 
weak and feeble instrument for the Lord to 
use !" though we know very well that worthi- 
ness and strength, per se, are not in us ; nei- 
ther are they requirements of the Lord for 
His workers ; for He hag saii He chooses the 
weak things of the world to confound the 
things that are mighty. 

This counterfeit humility covers self-asser- 
tion as a wet cloth does the face of a dead 
man, and it is a most unsightly thing. 

We need to see the infirmity, that we may 
ask God for its cure. 



194 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

You have not succeeded in the Lord's 
wovk of late as you used to do. Competent 
judges have pronounced you strong for your 
years. Your powers have been acknowledged, 
your services sought after. Lately nobody 
seems to care for your help, because you fail to 
bring to pass the things that ought to be 
done. You prepare yourself more carefully 
than ever. You try to reinforce your courage 
by thinking over the commendatory things 
that have been said of your efforts. All 
this time you are doing the very opposite of 
the thing that is the secret of success. Paul 
says, " When I am weak, then I am strong." 
When one feels his weakness, then he leans 
on God, and the work is done. You do not 
care to be regarded weak. Indeed, if any- 
one hints at your inadequacy for the work 
in hand, you are offended. Of course you 
know you are very weak and unworthy, but 
you have been trusted to do some things, and 
they generally came out about right. You 
have the word of God in your mind and on 



UNDER DISCIPLINE. 195 

your tongue, but like one who has let slip 
the syllable by which the combination lock 
of his safe was fastened, you have lost the 
key by which to open the promises, and make 
available their resources. 

If you would ask God, and believe for the 
answer, He would whisper again into your 
soul the word of power ! He lets the temptei 
loose on you a little, to drive you to feel 
your need of grace. I think the Lord uses 
Satan as a shepherd does his dog, to start up 
the sheep that are straying out of the way. 

You hear him growl and bark, and you 
are terrified. Like a silly sheep, you run 
this way and that, as if you had quite lost 
your head. 

You redouble your zeal. You dash into 
this and that Christian work. You try to 
make up in energy what you seem to lack in 
skill ; yet your efforts are unavailing. 

You increase your knowledge of holy 
tactics ; but results are nothing at all what 
they were when you knew much less than 



196 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

you do now. Trials come. Friends fail. 
Your way seems hedged on every hand. 
You cry to God for deliverance, yet the 
burdens seem to grow heavier. You say 
with the Psalmist, " Lover and friend hast 
thou put far from me. All thy waves and 
thy billows are gone over me." You begin 
to question God's love and power, — to 
doubt His care for His own work. You 
have given yourself wholly to Him. You 
have sacrificed everything that you knew 
to give for His cause. You cannot under- 
stand His apparent indifference. You cer- 
tainly pray enough. Whole nights are spent 
in restless, importunate prayer. Please permit 
me a few suggestions. The Lord make them 
helpful to you in these days of discipline. 

Cast not away your confidence. God's 
interest in His own children is above 
challenge. You dare not think the opposite 
of that. Hold steadily your faith in Him, 
though the heavens fall. Use your common 
sense. Settle it that your trials are disciplin- 



UNDER DISCIPLINE. 197 

ary. They are meant to correct your faults. 
Now search for the unsoundness. It lies far 
beneath the surface, else you would have had 
it set right long ago. It takes deep, severe 
probing to find it ; but God has taken you 
in hand in answer to that prayer of yours, 
" Cleanse Thou me from secret faults : " 
and He is not going to let you go with 
a half healing. When we desire it, He 
makes thorough work. Ask the Holy Spirit 
to search you, and see if there be any wicked 
way in you. Bring your motives to the 
straight-edge of the Word of God. Sur- 
render unconditionally every controverted 
point. Choose the Divine Will unflinching- 
ly, because you know it is right, always and 
only right. You seem to be losing what 
property you have, and your chance to make 
more. If God sees you can do more for Him 
without a dollar, choose to have Him take it 
all. Oh, but he lets others, who are better 
than you 7 hope to be, keep their property. 
" What is that to thee ? " Christ says, 



198 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

"follow thou Me." He had not where to 
lay His head ; and He may mean to promote 
you by placing you on His staff, in this war ; 
— giving you the fare He chose for Himself. 
The disciple is not above his Lord. 

" But I had so many plans for His work." 
He makes His own plans. The Captain of 
our Salvation orders the campaign. Who are 
you to dare touch His part of the work? 
" But it hurts to give all this up." Then you 
have found one unsound spot. Let the blood 
of healing so cure you that there will be no 
pain in choosing the Lord's will in every- 
thing. 

You have often sung : — 

" Perish every fond ambition, 
All I've sought, or hoped, or known." 

The Lord has taken you at your word, and is 
answering the prayer. You have asked Him 
to help you 

" Learn to scorn the praise of men, 
And learn to lose with God, 
For Jesus won the world through shame, 
And beckons us that road." 



UNDER DISCIPLINE. 199 

That is fine devotional sentiment; it seems 
quite another thing when it comes into every- 
day life. These losses and crosses, property- 
taking wings, and friends turning the cold 
shoulder, are meant to teach you the mock- 
ing poverty of worldly gain and honors. 

You think you have learned the lesson, 
and yet the rod is not removed. As long as 
the discipline continues you may be sure its 
purpose is not yet accomplished. God is 
infinitely more anxious to have you relieved 
from chastisement than you are to be free 
from the pain. Scrutinize yet more carefully 
your motives. Choose the will of God, even 
at your own cost, yet more resolutely. And, 
after all, you most overcome inner as well 
as outer enemies by faith. Ask the Holy 
Spirit to teach you what you need to know, 
what the chastening is meant to drive you to 
learn. Trust Him to answer the prayer. 
Believe that He works in you to will and to 
do of His own good pleasure. Thank Him for 
the discipline, and for the lesson. Trust 



200 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

Him to deliver you from the trial when He 
sees it best, and go on like a happy child, 
rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, 
and in every thing giving thanks. 

We are in a hostile land, on an enemy's 
shore. The world is in revolt against our 
King, and it is the one thing to be done by 
those who are loyal, to bring all the rest 
back to their allegiance. War is not a holi- 
day business, nor a gala day amusement. 
We must learn to endure hardness as good 
soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must 
stand, and, having done all, stand. 

Clan Grant in Scotland furnished for the 
Napoleonic and Crimean wars, soldiers who 
seemed invincible. Wellington said of his 
Highlanders, " They can run beside a trooper 
all day, live on a handful of meal, sleep in 
the snow, and fight always for victory." The 
device on the banner of Clan Grant was 
a crag rising out of a moor ; and over it was 
the legend, " Stand fast, Crag Allache ! " And 
that was the battle-cry of the clan, " Stand 



UNDER DISCIPLINE. 201 

fast. Crag Allache I " Ruskin says of it, 
" Though mortised into the backbone of the 
earth, Crag Allache might give way, but Clan 
Grant, never ! " The cry comes ringing down 
the lines of Christ's war-worn veterans, 
" Stand fast in the Lord ! n 



CHAPTER XIII. 

AT YOUR BEST. 

We dare not question the fact that God 
would have us at our best, every hour of 
every day of every year. There never will 
come a time when we can relax our hygienic 
habits, and let our bodies grow weak and 
helpless for lack of care, our minds nerveless 
and inactive, and our souls feeble and sickly, 
without knowing that we are living, not ac- 
cording to the will of God, but against its 
declared dicta. The word must always be, 
"No step backward, but always onward, 
steadily, right on I " 

Growth is one of the basal laws that repre- 
sent to us the Divine will. When we cease 
to grow we begin to die. 

Spiritual growth underlies the prosperity 



AT YOTJR BEST, 203 

of mind and body. We seldom feel the 
" ought " holding us to the care of our physi- 
cal life till we understand that this is a relig- 
ious duty. Our best intellectual quickenings 
and uplifts come to us through the direct illu- 
mination of the Holy Spirit, stirring us to 
know and do that we may the better glorify 
God. 

Hence, if we would be at our best in body 
and mind, we must keep near the Lord, grow- 
ing always in His grace and knowledge. 

One indication of spiritual growth is the mas- 
tory of our prejudice, that seems an infirmity 
that hardly has moral quality, because quite 
out of our reach ; — like the color of our eyes, 
determine^ by the constitution of things, and 
altogether changeless. Not so. If we have 
a prejudice against one, we prejudge him. 
From some unfortunate act of his that has 
come to our knowledge, some misinterpreta- 
tion that has been given by a careless ac- 
quaintance, we pass judgment upon him; 
and, though we may be too well trained to 



204 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE, 

speak ill of him, in our private thinking he is 
always a person not to be loved, or trusted, 
or honored. Now this is a violation of a di- 
rect command, " Judge not." It is, also, al- 
together out of harmony with the charity 
that thinketh no evil. Much of our disci- 
pline is meant to cure us of this, and similar 
infirmities. The only remedy is in a direct 
Divine healing touch, and that may be had 
in answer to believing prayer. 

If we keep at our best it must be indicated 
by constant improvement in spiritual things ; 
and in nothing is this more manifest than in 
the increase of our faith. We must learn 
directness in prayer. I have known Protes- 
tants who went over their daily " subjects of 
prayer," as formally as any Romanist could 
do. When they became earnest in some re- 
quest they were moved to present, they seem- 
ed to rack their rhetoric to find forms in 
which to present the petition, and yet avoid 
using exactly the same words every time. 

As you grow in faith you come to understand 



AT YOUR BEST. 205 

that God is a Person, to be addressed accord- 
ingly. You will learn to state your requests 
in plain, simple, direct speech ; believing that 
He prompted the prayer, that it is according 
to His will, that He hears, and that conse- 
quently you have the petitions. Tennyson 
says, "More things are wrought by prayer 
than this world dreams of." More things 
might be wrought by prayer than we have 
ever dreamed of. What about the removing 
of mountains, the subduing of kingdoms, the 
putting to flight the armies of the aliens ? If 
we are at our best, we will be growing 
toward the ability to do valiantly in God's 
strength. There is an active, as well as pas- 
sive, attitude, for the believer. It takes se- 
vere discipline to teach him to lie quietly in 
the hands of the Lord ; and when He is once 
completely subdued, it seems to take as sharp 
a goading to make him use his strength on 
the enemy. He must learn to be like the 
sling, and also like the slinger's arm. The 
waves had to wash over the pebble, back and 



206 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

forth, back and forth, year in and year out, 
to bring it to sufficient smoothness, so that it 
would go straight to the mark. At last one 
whirl of the sling, and one jerk of the sling- 
er's arm, sent it crashing through the skull of 
the giant. 

You little know your own possibilities. 
Steam, when left to itself, floated out upon 
the air in clouds, pretty, and useless; but 
when caught, and held, and turned upon ma- 
chinery, it was found to be equal to the work 
of the world. When Watt watched the lift- 
ing of the tea-kettle lid, little did he dream 
that he was on the track of a principle that 
would, one day, draw millions of tons over 
seas, across continents, through mountains, 
never tiring, never resting, leaving human 
brain and muscle with leisure for higher 
achievements. 

We are sent to school to learn the use of 
speech, — in the Lord's school we learn the 
power of silence. They only are strong 
who can rule their own spirit, holding their 



AT YOUR BEST. 207 

strength till the Lord gives the word to 
speak. 

When the soul is full of indignation 
against wrong, burning words will slip their 
leash and dart forth, in spite of judgment 
and will, unless one has himself well in hand. 
I remember a scene on a convention floor 
where a strong advocate of a good cause was 
thrown off his guard by the tantalizing 
questions of one who was evidently deter- 
mined to drive him from his position by fair 
means or foul. He fenced well for a little 
while, till his sensibilities were stung by a 
specially provoking question. Then he for- 
got himself, and gave the rein to his sarcasm. 
He gave his opponent a sharp, well-deserved 
rebuke, but he lost his cause. If he had 
held steady under that last galling fire, he 
would probably have won. 

Do you know how William of Orange 
came to be called "the Silent?" A gay 
young nobleman, he was riding one day with 
a French prince, when the latter laid open to 



208 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

him a scheme that the kings of southwestern 
Europe had on the tapis for the destruction 
of the Protestants in Holland. The iron 
entered William's soul ; but he did not betray 
himself by so much as the twitch of a 
muscle. From that hour, however, his will 
was set as a flint to save his country. He 
stood like a Gibraltar against the storm of 
persecution that burst upon the Netherlands. 
He is recognized not only as a fearless, self- 
sacrificing patriot, but a statesman of the 
first rank. We associate his greatness with 
his power over himself, keeping silence when 
another would have spoken, and, by speak- 
ing, ruined the cause for which he stood. 

The Lord Jesus Christ gave us an example 
of self-control. The impulsive and erratic 
Peter resented the indignities heaped upon 
the Master, and striking about with his 
sword, he cut off a man's ear. Christ, though 
staggering under the load of that awful, 
redemptive agony, stopped, and by miracle 
repaired the damage that His servant had 



AT YOUR BEST. 209 

done, reminding him that He could bring 
twelve legions of His own strong angels upon 
the field by a wave of the hand. 

In bringing us to our best, God gives us 
easier or heavier lessons according to the 
stuff of which we are made, and the work He 
has for us to do. The lapidary gives weeks 
to the polishing of a diamond, while a 
cheaper stone can be finished in far less time. 

Before He puts into our hands the best 
work of which we are capable, He tests our 
strength to the utmost, and also our reliabili- 
ty. In the testing-room of a watch factory, 
I saw watches that were being proved before 
they were allowed to " time " railway trains, 
where the loss of a minute might destroy a 
hundred lives. They had to stand on their 
heads and lie on their faces, to be shut up in 
ice-chests, and then in hot ovens. Their 
value depended upon their unvarying relia- 
bility. When we ask God to use us fcr large 
work, the first question is, " Can you drink of 
the cup, and be baptized with the baptism? " 



210 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

If we answer, " We are able/' we may expect 
such testings as will give ample exercise for 
our faith, till we have shown that we are 
dead, and our lives hid with Christ in God. 

Peter had an energetic, fiery soul, capable 
of taking in so much of God, that under his 
first sermon after the Pentecostal baptism, 
three thousand were converted. With his 
natural leadership, he must have come to 
think himself somewhat essential to the im- 
perilled infant church. The Lord had to 
teach him that the excellency of the power is 
not of men, but of God, and no flesh can glo- 
ry in His presence. So the first thing Bishop 
Peter knew, he was in prison, with a strong 
probability of losing his head. No doubt he 
had something of a struggle to get the care 
of the church back where it belonged, in the 
hands of the Lord. He reached the point of 
perfect submission and rest in God, for he lay 
asleep between two soldiers, when the angel 
touched him, and led him out of the prison, 
the great iron gate swinging open before him 
of its own accord. 



AT YOUR BEST. 211 

Only through the infinite grace of God 
can one learn to be so submissive that for 
Christ's sake he will become the servant of 
all, never asserting himself, or " standing up 
for his rights " ; and at the same time using 
every power to its utmost in aggressive 
war for the conquest of the world for his 
Master. The two roles seem utterly incom- 
patible ; and so they are except by the power 
of the Lord Jesus. The only way that one 
can master this paradox, is to be dead to self 
and sin, and alive unto God. He will find 
the more completely " dead " he is, the more 
fully " alive " he will be. He will seek noth- 
ing for himself, but every dollar, every hour, 
every ounce of strength, will be made to do 
its utmost for the Lord, 

A successful preacher was asked how he 
prepared and preached his sermons. He said, 
44 1 prepare as carefully as if I had it all to 
do ; then I trust God as completely as if I 
had made no preparation at all." That may 
illustrate your consecration to the Lord- 



212 FBOM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE, 

You us© your powers as carefully and skill- 
fully as if all depended upon your efforts ; and 
at the same time, you trust Him as if you 
never expected to do another stroke of work, 
and had actually done nothing. 

This seems like giving you who are just 
fairly beginning the earnest work and study 
of life, advanced lessons, such as are under- 
stood only by those in whose hair the pelting 
snowballs have caught. Yet I believe in 
holding before each a high ideal, from the 
first. Read only the best authors, if you 
would learn to express yourself properly. 
Listen often to classical music, if you would 
form a correct musical taste. Study the best 
pictures, if you would learn to discriminate 
in works of art. 

So in spiritual things: instead of looking 
into the life of a frail, selfish, average profes- 
sor of piety, and thinking that is as well as 
you need ever hope to do, associate in thought 
with the best and highest. Better still, keep 
before your mind the Model Young Man of 



AT YOUB BEST. 213 

Galilee. As He was in the world, so are you. 
Your Elder Brother, — study Him, imitate 
Him, and let Him dwell in your heart by 
faith. You can do all things through His 
strength. You can be more than conqueror 
through Him that hath loved you and given 
Himself for you. His gift of love to you is, 
not only eternal life beyond the grave, but 
the privilege of representing Him even in this 
life where people are so crooked and perverse. 
I remember a legend of a prince who had 
promised to send the princess whom he was 
to marry, a valuable betrothal present. When 
it came, and was taken from the box, behold 
it was only an iron egg. She was displeased 
and threw it down. When it struck the 
marble floor, it burst open, showing a silver 
case. She took it up and began to examine 
it, and presently she touched a spring that 
opened the case, and disclosed a golden yolk. 
After a little that was opened by another 
spring, and within it was a crown of rubies, 
and within that a diamond ring — the be- 



214 FROM FIFTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE. 

trothal ring. Christ's token of love to ns 
is in the form of severe discipline, testing our 
trust in Him, or plain, simple, hard work, 
which we may do from love to Him. If we 
receive the gift, and make the most of it for 
His sake, we shall find within it the crown of 
our royalty, — kings and priests unto God, — 
and the ring that makes us His own forever. 
May the Lord give each one of my class of 
twenty thousand an inheritance incorruptible, 
undefiled, and that fadeth not away. 



